Chapter 24: The Mysteries of Ritual Tools

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Chapter 24: The Mysteries of Ritual Tools

“Chen Yuan?” Yu Shenliu froze when he opened the door.

What was he looking at?

Chen Yuan was leaning on a mop, his chin resting on the handle. His hair was disheveled, and several chicken feathers were stuck to his clothes, making him look like he had been cleaning up after a wild bout of play and had paused to take a break. When he saw Yu Shenliu open the door, he calmly turned his head and raised a hand in greeting.

“You’re back.”

“You…” Compared with Chen Yuan’s usual mature and composed demeanor, he looked like nothing more than a child who had gone wild playing and was now cleaning up the aftermath. Yet his attitude remained as calm as ever, creating a subtle air of deliberate composure that made Yu Shenliu unable to stop himself from wanting to laugh.

Walking over, Yu Shenliu casually plucked the chicken feathers stuck to Chen Yuan’s clothes and then smoothed his disheveled hair before asking, “What are you doing?” How had he managed to make such a mess? Given Chen Yuan’s personality, this rather disheveled appearance was far too different from his usual self.

Seeing the feather between Yu Shenliu’s fingers, Chen Yuan stared blankly for a moment before instinctively reaching up to feel around his own head, trying to see whether there were any feathers left.

“I’ll do it.”

Watching Chen Yuan pawing around aimlessly without finding the right spot, Yu Shenliu unconsciously curled the corners of his lips. Chen Yuan usually looked like an unfathomable master, but it turned out he had a side like this too. As he spoke, he helped Chen Yuan remove the remaining feathers.

Chen Yuan cooperated fully, standing still as Yu Shenliu helped him remove the feathers, while answering his earlier question. “I just killed a rooster. It might have made a bit of a racket.”

He hadn’t expected the rooster he had bought on a whim to be so lively. It was practically a fighter jet among roosters, darting and jumping everywhere, more like a rabbit than a rooster. He had only let his grip slip for a moment, and the whole house had been thrown into chaos. He had just about finished cleaning it up. Then again, compared with the world he had come from, Huaxia in this world had less pollution and placed more emphasis on natural things. Compared with broiler chickens that had been raised to the point of becoming unhealthy, it was only natural for this rooster to have such fighting spirit.

“Killed a rooster?” Yu Shenliu was surprised. “Why did you kill a rooster?” Don’t tell him that Chen the Half-Immortal actually wanted to kill a rooster and cook it himself?

Chen Yuan looked around and decided he had more or less finished cleaning here too. He picked up the mop. “I’ll put this away first.”

Yu Shenliu nodded. There were hired servants who came to clean every day, but since Chen Yuan had gone out of his way to clean the place himself, it would be a little unreasonable to tell him he didn’t need to do it. Besides, Chen the Half-Immortal looked rather cute when he was so seriously cleaning the room.

After putting away the mop, washing his hands and face, and fixing his hair, Chen Yuan came back out and sat down in the armchair in the living room. Then he told Yu Shenliu what had happened.

Sitting down at the tea table, Yu Shenliu finally noticed the few things laid out on it: a small pouch containing red powder, a small bottle of baijiu, a piece of jade that didn’t look particularly impressive, and half a bowl of something that was unmistakably chicken blood.

Looking at these things, Yu Shenliu suddenly felt the divine-master aura around the young man in front of him return.

What exactly was it about this that made it feel so much like a Celestial Master performing a ritual? Yu Shenliu silently wondered, only to find that the young man who had looked so adorably foolish with chicken feathers all over him moments ago had once again taken on the air of an expert.

“Do you remember Boss Wang from before?”

Boss Wang? Which Boss Wang? As far as Yu Shenliu was concerned, Boss Wang had basically nothing to do with him. For a moment, when Chen Yuan mentioned him, he genuinely couldn’t remember who he was talking about.

“The one who hung up the feng shui mirror,” Chen Yuan reminded him. “He came looking for me this morning.”

The moment he heard the latter part of Chen Yuan’s explanation, Yu Shenliu frowned. He had found Chen Yuan? Yu Shenliu knew what Chen Yuan’s daily life was like. As mysterious as his abilities were, given the place where he set up his stall and his age, how many people could have gotten to know him in the ten or so days since he arrived in Jincheng? Boss Wang hadn’t even known Chen Yuan’s name when they first met, yet he had somehow managed to track Chen Yuan down at the park where he set up his stall. Could there be something wrong?

Yu Shenliu knew that Chen Yuan had never been the type to worry about such things. While that meant most things could never affect him, it was always better to be safe than sorry. What if someone took advantage of Chen Yuan’s personality and tried to make a move against him?

While Yu Shenliu was busy turning into a conspiracy theorist and mentally classifying everyone who approached Chen Yuan as potentially up to no good, Chen Yuan had already continued speaking. “He’s already suffered the consequences, which is why he came looking for me. There’s nothing much to say about what happened afterward. In short, I decided to give him a hand. Right now, I’m preparing something to delay his calamity.”

“Delay?” Yu Shenliu’s attention immediately returned to Chen Yuan. He remembered the stories in ancient novels where fox spirits hid under a pregnant woman’s bed to avoid heavenly tribulation and wondered why, in Chen Yuan’s case, it was only a matter of delaying it.

“Everyone’s blessings and accumulated virtue are predetermined. The calamities that are meant to come will come. If you avoid one, there will be another.” Chen Yuan nodded, reaffirming that he meant delay. “There are also genuine treasures that can ward off calamity, such as jade worn for many years, or loyal pets that take calamity on behalf of their owners. Actually, it’s quite simple. No matter what method you use, your calamity is ultimately meant to befall you. But when you nurture jade or raise a pet, and truly take good care of it, you have given something to them. In other words, they owe you something. When calamity comes, they can take it in your place, repaying what you have given them. But if you raise these spiritual things with the intention of making them ward off calamity for you, then they can hardly be said to owe you anything. Only genuine devotion and affection can bring about the proper effect.”

Glancing at the piece of jade on the table, Yu Shenliu pointed at it. “So you’re using jade?”

“Jade has an innate affinity with the spiritual. In the realm of metaphysics, if you truly want to cultivate jade or make something that can delay a calamity, you need a suitable vessel like jade. There are also masters who can accomplish everything with nothing but talisman paper. I just can’t do that.”

Chen Yuan then pointed to the things on the table and continued, “Cinnabar, a homophone with ‘to slay,’ is used to ward off and slay evil. Rooster blood—the rooster heralds the dawn, so it is yang in nature—is meant to counter the yin qi at Boss Wang’s place. As for the baijiu, it serves as a catalyst. This is distilled liquor, which contains the essence of the five grains. In other words, you could say it contains the essence of heaven and earth.”

Looking at the things on the table, Yu Shenliu suddenly felt enlightened. He had always found it strange that charlatans used things like baijiu and yellow paper, but once Chen Yuan explained it, he understood. In the end, these things all came from traditions that had been passed down through Chinese culture.

“How are you going to do it?” Yu Shenliu asked, quite interested in the actual process.

Chen Yuan shrugged. “Normally, before performing a ritual like this, you should bathe and change your clothes so that you’re purified, which allows the effect to last longer and be stronger. But with someone like Boss Wang, if I don’t put a little pressure on him, he’ll come up with all sorts of ideas. So I can’t be bothered with all that. I’ll just do it directly.”

As he spoke, a faint, mischievous smile suddenly appeared on Chen Yuan’s face, which had moments ago been filled with the air of an unfathomable master.

Yu Shenliu watched him and couldn’t help curving his lips into a smile as well. Chen Yuan’s personality was still a little… mischievous.

There was already an empty bowl on the table. Chen Yuan dropped the piece of jade into it, then opened the bottle of baijiu and leaned over to smell it. He immediately scrunched up his face and pursed his lips in distaste before tipping the bottle and pouring the baijiu over the jade.

His way of pouring was rather peculiar. He poured three times first, leaving slightly longer intervals between each pour. Then he poured twice in quick succession, stopping almost as soon as the liquor left the bottle, before repeating the sequence of three pours. It symbolized the Qian and Kun trigrams. By the time he finished, the jade in the bowl was half-submerged in the baijiu, and the smell of alcohol filled the living room.

Yu Shenliu watched from the side and suddenly felt as though he were a child crouching by a wall, spending an entire afternoon watching ants carry things around. There was something rather childlike about it.

Chen Yuan picked up the bowl and gently swirled it, allowing the baijiu to fully come into contact with the jade. His eyes remained fixed on the jade in the bowl as his lips moved silently, reciting something.

Then he poured the baijiu from the bowl into another bowl and set it aside. Only then did he take out some cinnabar from the small pouch and, judging the amount by eye, pour it into the half-bowl of chicken blood. He placed his right hand beneath his left, pressed his thumbs into the mixture, and rotated them clockwise 180 degrees, using them to stir.

Yu Shenliu hadn’t understood Chen Yuan’s earlier movements, but when he saw him do this, he suddenly understood. Was that a Taiji? The thumbs represented the two points of Taiji, and rotating them 180 degrees… Could that mean the reversal of Qian and Kun ?

Without pulling his thumbs out of the chicken blood, Chen Yuan curled his other fingers together and lifted the bowl. He then poured the cinnabar-mixed chicken blood over the jade that had been soaked in baijiu, just enough to submerge the jade completely, before setting the bowl down.

“That’s it?” Yu Shenliu looked at the bowl, unable to put into words exactly how he felt. He knew Chen Yuan genuinely had real abilities, but what he had just done honestly looked an awful lot like some charlatan performing a ritual.

“Ah, isn’t this supposed to be a ritual tool made specifically at noon?” Chen Yuan glanced at the clock, then stood up and began gathering the bowls, liquor bottle, and other things. “I almost forgot. The bowls I bought from outside aren’t going back into the cupboard after this. You don’t have to worry about accidentally eating cinnabar, which is highly poisonous.”

Who would worry about that?

Yu Shenliu was both amused and exasperated. What he was more concerned about was the fact that this thing they had just cobbled together was actually supposed to be the legendary “ritual tools.” How was that even remotely scientific?

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