"These people are too cunning!"
The provincial graduate said angrily. When he woke up, he had become Nick's "neighbor." Cao Xi had arranged lodging for him next door, so the two of them no longer had to keep yielding the bed to each other.
The provincial graduate needed someone inside and outside to cover for him when acting as a substitute. Otherwise, it would have been difficult for a man in his fifties to sit in the examination cubicle of a "novice scholar" in his twenties without being discovered.
Now the two of them had become "turtles in a jar." Nick thought he had used the idiom correctly, yet the provincial graduate still scolded him.
Softshell turtles were not turtles, though both had shells, which led many people to think they were eating turtle when they ate softshell turtle. The River Chart and Luo Writing were carved onto turtle shells, which were commonly used for Divination and other purposes. Softshell turtle shells were comparatively soft and had no distinct patterns, so eating one did not carry the same fear of punishment as killing a turtle or snake.
The Classic of Mountains and Seas recorded a strange creature called the Three-Legged Softshell Turtle. Eating it could protect one from gu poisoning. The Erya also recorded that the Three-Legged Softshell Turtle was the transformed form of Yu's father, Gun, much like how Wangdi became a cuckoo after death.
A three-legged softshell turtle should have been easy enough to find. It might have lost a leg in a fight, or perhaps it had been born deformed. Nick had seen a two-headed snake in India. People had enshrined it and treated it as a deity.
How many of these legends about strange beasts could actually be proven true? How could anyone believe such "historical