After being pressed with the talisman mold and baked over the fire for a moment, a square sheet of vermilion talisman paper emerged fresh from the oven.
Boom!
A burst of flame suddenly exploded inside the little house.
"Damn Green-Haired Old Man, tell me what happened! How did this thing suddenly blow up?!" Wei Suo screamed desperately, his entire face blackened with soot and nearly half his hair singed away.
"Have you never made talismans before?" The Green Robe Old Man froze for a moment.
"I haven't. So what?"
"You'd never made one, yet you dared to do it like this right away?" The Green Robe Old Man immediately burst out laughing. "Seeing how confident you looked, I thought you were a talisman-making master. Turns out you're just a little rookie who's never made talismans and knows nothing at all. The patterns on talismans accord with the Heaven and Earth Yuan Qi, and every pattern is a tiny spell formation. If its position on the talisman paper is even slightly off, or the lines are a little too thick or thin, it simply won't become a talisman. Did you think that as long as you drew something roughly similar, you could refine a talisman? Do you think talisman and artifact refining are so easy to muddle through?"
"Are you sure you didn't make up this talisman formula?" The Green Robe Old Man laughed heartily as he mocked Wei Suo. This time, however, Wei Suo did not get angry. Instead, his expression turned somewhat serious. Though Fire Tail Flowers had the word "fire" in their name, that was only because they resembled fiery red dog tails. And while Fire Scorpions carried some Fire Fiend Qi in their tails, even the most powerful Fire Scorpion could not possibly release that burst of fire from earlier.
"Bullshit! If I made it up, then find me three things that don't contain Fire Fiend Qi themselves but can explode into a burst of flame when mixed together! I already told you the talisman formula was one hundred percent real, yet you still didn't believe me."
"Damn it, if you really made it up, then you can spend the rest of your life soaking in a shit pit." Wei Suo shouted at the Green Robe Old Man, but inwardly, he had made up his mind to test this talisman formula thoroughly.
Wei Suo was poor as hell right now, and that spendthrift beauty had just used a First-Order Fireball Talisman to provoke him. The fireball had been as large as a dustpan. Forget being struck head-on—even getting licked by its flames probably would not feel good. The power of such a First-Order Fireball Talisman was at least equivalent to the Fireball Spell cast by a Fifth Level of Sea of Consciousness Realm cultivator.
Moreover, First-Order talismans did not consume much True Essence. Taking Wei Suo as an example, the True Essence cultivation art he practiced was the Purple Profound True Art, and the only offensive spell he knew was the Azure Water Blade. With his Second Level of Sea of Consciousness Realm cultivation in the Purple Profound True Art, he could cast only a little over twenty Azure Water Blades in succession. But if he used the kind of First-Order Fireball Talisman that spendthrift beauty had used, then with Wei Suo's cultivation, using a hundred of them would not be a problem.
That was why spell talismans that did not consume True Essence had always been hot commodities on the market. As long as ordinary cultivators had enough Spirit Stones, they would buy a few to carry with them for protection. However, First-Order talismans generally cost around half a Low-grade Spirit Stone. Apart from some defensive talismans for preserving his life, Wei Suo had not bought a single offensive talisman. Instead, he bought the more cost-effective Exploding Flame Beads, which had half the power of Fireball Talismans but cost only one-third as much.
If these three extremely common materials could truly refine a First-Order Fireball Talisman, then this talisman formula would be no different from a hen that laid Spirit Stones for Wei Suo.
"Kid, can you stop wasting Fire Scorpion Blood? I already told you that even cultivators highly skilled at making talismans need at least ten days to half a month of practice before they might successfully refine a new talisman. You've only practiced for seven days, and you already want to make a Fireball Talisman? Stop dreaming. The Fire Scorpion Blood you're wasting would be better off for me to drink."
"Cut the crap. If you don't shut up, then if this talisman fails, I'll blame it on you and treat you to another cup of piss."
Inside the little stone house, Wei Suo drew a deep breath and, with a solemn expression, dipped the blue talisman brush in his hand into the bottle of Fire Scorpion Blood, allowing the brush to soak up its fill.
After his first talisman-making attempt had failed, Wei Suo had practiced without stopping for seven days.
After carefully recalling every detail of the Fireball Talisman's patterns once more, Wei Suo removed the brush, now saturated with Fire Scorpion Blood, from the bottle. Before him lay a square sheet of talisman paper already prepared from Silver Candle Grass and Fire Tail Flowers.
Basically, anyone who had never made talismans needed to train using talisman carvings. A talisman carving meant first engraving talisman patterns onto a smooth wooden board, then repeatedly tracing those engraved patterns with a talisman brush. Once one became proficient through practicing according to the varying thicknesses and depths of the engraved lines, one would naturally know how heavily to press the brush when drawing on actual talisman paper, greatly increasing the chances of successfully making talismans.
Besides that, ordinary talisman paper was quite valuable, and typical cultivators simply would not waste genuine talisman paper on practice. But because Silver Candle Grass and Fire Tail Flowers were everywhere around Lingyue City now, Wei Suo directly used the blood from the otherwise useless parts of Fire Scorpions, absorbed it with his talisman brush, and practiced right on talisman paper.
By practicing directly on talisman paper, Wei Suo also discovered that the quality of the paper greatly affected whether talisman refinement succeeded. After all, if the paper had even the slightest flaw or rough patch, and the talisman brush failed to move smoothly through a stroke, it could very well cause the refinement of that First-Order Fireball Talisman to fail outright.
Thus, over these seven days, Wei Suo had also put in painstaking effort refining talisman paper. The sheets he now made looked far smoother and cleaner than the first batch he had produced seven days ago. The one he had prepared today was the finest among the last several batches: smooth as a mirror and gleaming with a faint sheen.
Wei Suo did not hesitate in the slightest as he set down his brush. A rounded, fluid red line rapidly stretched out beneath its tip. The originally dark-red Fire Scorpion Blood immediately turned fiery red after seeping into the talisman paper, shining with a crystalline luster like jade.
Fine beads of sweat emerged across his forehead, but his gaze remained intensely focused, every movement incomparably precise.
Less than half an incense stick later, Wei Suo completed the final stroke of the Fireball Talisman. The instant that final fine rune was finished, the cluster of flame-red patterns on the talisman paper suddenly lit up in full, emitting a hazy red glow. Threads of warmth also began to radiate from the entire sheet.
"It actually worked?" In the utterly silent little stone house, Wei Suo stared blankly at the talisman before him, while the Green Robe Old Man widened his eyes in disbelief.
On the vermilion talisman paper, streaks of scarlet patterns emitted traces of heat. A faint radiance flowed along those patterns, as though tiny wisps of flame were moving within the talisman.
A faint warmth radiated from the talisman.
No matter how one looked at it, there did not seem to be anything wrong with this First-Order Fireball Talisman.
"You really never made talismans before?" After staring blankly for a long while, the Green Robe Old Man could not help asking Wei Suo.
"No." Still seeming unable to recover his senses, Wei Suo shook his head. "I only used to draw some stripes on ordinary white sables and pass them off as Black Wind Sables to sell to people."
(The fifth update for today is here. So, handsome men and beautiful ladies, can you give me a little more support? The prizes from the previous YY event and the first event for this new book have all been prepared through Tiantian's hard work. Since tomorrow afternoon I'll be flying back to Changsha with Shenji, returning to Fallen Street to seek out old footprints and the little white flowers beneath Yuelu Mountain, we'll try to mail out the greeting cards tomorrow morning. T-shirts, mouse pads, and the other prizes will be sent out on the 20th or 21st, so please don't worry. Updates will remain strong over the next few days as well. If everyone gives me enough support, I'll post my daily whereabouts and photos on Tencent Weibo every day. I'll photograph all the places I wrote about in Rogue Expert and Rogue Expert 2, including the birthplace of the Wretched Secret Manual, one by one for you to see.)
Before you continue