23. More talisman work! (How many corners can I cut?)

The warm late summer turned into a chilly autumn. Wen Zhihao’s life fell into a comfortable pattern, as he enjoyed sleeping, kittens, did a little bit of talisman study, made a good amount of money selling glowing items, and took weekly trips out of the sect with Sun Fuyu.

Unfortunately...time passed and it was now approaching his talisman cultivation test with Elder Liu Ru. Wen Zhihao grudgingly stopped napping in the garden in order to ‘cram’.

Over the last few weeks, he had in fact already finished reading through the introductory jade slips—by the power of not having the internet and forums to distract him. He felt that his focus had definitely increased.

As he was not one for re-reading textbooks as a study method, Wen Zhihao instead went to the Outer Sect Library and found different low-level talisman cultivation manuals there too.

The problem was that a lot of ‘basic’ talismans were complicated, with fancy flicks and swirls that could either be embellishments or extremely necessary.

So Wen Zhihao went down the rabbit hole of how-to-write-talismans-more-easily.

(He tried not to think about how going down that rabbit hole probably took more time than if he simply slowly wrote the complicated talismans...)

The problem was that talismans were handwritten. And at least according to the manuals, the written form should display power! Elegance! Profoundness! And each copy should be the same!

But as a 21st century person...if he wanted to make things the same, he would use a computer. Use software to create the image and print it off, identical every time.

The low-tech method in this world would be to use a stamp, which would be particularly useful for talismans that were used often.

So after playing around with how simplified and messy he could make the talismans and have them still work, Wen Zhihao then shifted his efforts to mass-production methods.

In this next project, he spent a lot of time first learning how to make a stamp (he found it best to recast the talisman symbols into straight lines, and then used clay to make the shape, since he was not going to bother to do any carving). Then he had to figure out how to infuse it with qi so that it wasn’t just some random set of lines. Was it better to inject in qi after the image was stamped? Or should he coat the stamp with qi and then press out the image?

Long story short, it took way too much effort to slowly infuse it with qi after stamping—Wen Zhihao had to ‘follow’ the lines to infuse qi, in which case he could have just written it from the very beginning. And if he tried to coat the stamp with qi, the qi liked to spread and became all blurry, messing up the energy lines.

Wen Zhihao reluctantly discarded the stamp, feeling very pained inside with all the time he spent on it. In the end, he returned to handwriting the simplified talisman characters and started to write a messy manual for himself so that he wouldn’t forget them.

One morning a few days before Wen Zhihao’s scheduled examination, Wen Zhihao carried a couple of talismans with him to the kitchens.

Sun Fuyu’s eyes brightened. “Good morning, Wen-shixiong!”

“Why are you always so polite,” Wen Zhihao said like he often did. “How was your morning sword practice?”

“Good!”

“Very good.” Wen Zhihao patted Sun Fuyu on the head.

“What are those?” Sun Fuyu asked.

Wen Zhihao passed two of them to Sun Fuyu. “Look what your shixiong has been doing! This gives off heat like a fire, no need for fuel. And this can be placed on items to make them lighter for transport!”

“You’re so smart, Wen-shixiong.”

Wen Zhihao gave an amused smile. “Hardly. These are based on the talismans in the jade slips. Oh, and I received my monthly spiritual stone allowance. You can have it, buy yourself something, okay?”

Hehehe, spoiling Sun Fuyu felt good…Sun Fuyu’s stunned appearance was cute every single time.

“Wen-shixiong, I can’t…”

“I insist.”

“But...but…”

Wen Zhihao rubbed Sun Fuyu’s head. “If you protest so much, you can repay back in the future after you advance into the inner sect.”

Sun Fuyu immediately nodded.

The two of them headed to the kitchen. After greeting all the aunty and uncle workers, Wen Zhihao showed them the two talismans, practically throwing them into Aunty Liu Jing’s hands.

“Cultivator Wen,” Liu Jing protested.

“Take it, take it, I made them for you!” Wen Zhihao insisted. “Isn’t it better if you can have a smokeless fire? I practised making talismans, these are the fruits of my work, and work like this is meant to be used, not preserved. Or...or how about I use them as payment for a big bowl of noodles?”

“...Stinky boy,” Liu Jing good-naturedly grumbled.

“I’m a man,” Wen Zhihao protested equally good-naturedly.

Old Tang laughed. “You’ll always be a young boy!”

“If I’m a young boy, then is Sun Fuyu a baby?” Wen Zhihao asked seriously.

Sun Fuyu’s cheeks went red. “Wen-shixiong!” he whisper-hissed in protest.

“Cultivator Sun is a lovely young man,” Liu Jing said promptly. “Anyone would love to have him as their family’s child. As for Cultivator Wen however...”

Sun Fuyu’s eyes widened in shock. “This young cultivator is honoured…”

Wen Zhihao laughed, rubbing Sun Fuyu’s head. “Yep, I definitely agree!”