Coming to Ask for Food

During this time, Yin Yunze had gained a general understanding of the situation in Clear Creek Village.

For one thing, most households were nearly out of stored food.

And what Yin Yunze was waiting for was the first person to come asking him for food.

After all, getting people to think of him when they ran out of food was one of the reasons Yin Yunze had brought food into this world that day.

But he waited and waited. Most people's rice jars were plainly scraping bottom, yet no one came, and Yin Yunze was growing impatient.

Walking back to the company, Yin Yunze turned the matter over in his mind. Suddenly, a devious thought occurred to him.

Should he just find a suitable target and use Dream Entry to give things a push?

But after thinking about Dream Entry's rather unreliable effects, Yin Yunze decided not to waste the Power of Incense Offerings.

Over the past few days, Yin Yunze had not simply treated himself as a tool. He had also familiarized himself with the two skills Dream Entry and Blessing.

Compared with Illusion Technique and Fox Fire, two skills closer to the nature of a fox immortal, Dream Entry and Blessing were more like the abilities of earth gods and their ilk in folk tales.

Dream Entry allowed Yin Yunze to enter someone's dream and, by consuming the Power of Incense Offerings, alter it to a certain degree.

The more he altered the dream, the more Power of Incense Offerings he consumed.

Yin Yunze's most extravagant attempt had been to fabricate an entire White Jade Capital from his imagination in Zhao Wan's dream.

And the Power of Incense Offerings it consumed was even greater than that of a large-scale Illusion Technique.

The only advantage it had over an illusion was that, once the dream had been constructed, it no longer needed a continuous supply of the Power of Incense Offerings.

An illusion, on the other hand, was a skill that continuously consumed the Power of Incense Offerings to maintain it for as long as it existed.

After only a few tests, however, Yin Yunze still felt that Dream Entry was something of a chicken rib.

Even the most ordinary use of Dream Entry consumed nearly as much incense as an Illusion Technique on the level of a low-grade illusion.

Yet in terms of actual effect, it was less practical than hypnosis.

The biggest difference between Dream Entry and an illusion was that, after the target woke up, there was a decay mechanism whereby they forgot the contents of the dream.

A single use of Dream Entry could only leave someone remembering a few of the most striking points, and those points might not be the important ones.

For example, Yin Yunze had once tried to use Dream Entry to get someone to come to the fox immortal temple and offer a few sticks of incense.

But after the man woke up, all he freaking remembered was the pretty young lady Yin Yunze had conjured up!

For the next few days, he told everyone he met that he had dreamed of a fairy. But the most important part, going to the fox immortal temple to offer incense, never even came up, let alone got done.

Thus, until he found a way around this dream-decay mechanism, he could forget about using Dream Entry to assign complicated tasks.

After all that painstaking work, the other person would wake up and forget most of it, and it also consumed a large amount of incense from faith. Yin Yunze really found it hard to take.

Its only advantage over a single-target Illusion Technique was that, perhaps because dreams themselves diminished the other person's powers of logic, some things said in them were easier for the target to believe.

That was assuming the other person still remembered them after waking up!

Simply put, the effect of a single-target Illusion Technique was like someone watching a 4D movie. If their powers of logic were strong enough, they could spot some traces of the Illusion Technique through comparison.

Someone who had experienced Dream Entry, however, would take the ideas Yin Yunze had planted for their own thoughts after waking up.

Still, outside of movie plots, few people in real life would undergo a drastic change in temperament just because they had a dream.

So, most of the time, Dream Entry could only give someone a push when they already had an idea but were hesitating.

For example, if someone was hesitating over whether to donate money to Yin Yunze, he could choose to use Dream Entry to make them resolve to donate.

But if someone did not believe in Yin Yunze to begin with, it would be difficult for him to use Dream Entry to force them to believe in him.

If it were really that simple, why would Yin Yunze need to spend time painstakingly supplying water every day? He could just play around in other people's dreams.

Perhaps a higher-level Dream Entry could change other people's thoughts, but Yin Yunze's Dream Entry was the lowest level, so its effects were quite ordinary.

Thus, in Yin Yunze's own view, Dream Entry was inferior to Illusion Technique most of the time and could only be considered a lesser supplement for special circumstances.

As for the final skill, Blessing, Yin Yunze found it the most baffling of the four.

It consumed the most Power of Incense Offerings of the four skills, yet its effects were also the hardest to see.

Yin Yunze had originally thought that Blessing would improve the target's luck.

But while testing it, Yin Yunze had even gritted his teeth and used one-fifth of his Power of Incense Offerings to bestow a Blessing on the young girl Zhao Wan.

Yet after watching the girl for three days, Yin Yunze had not seen anything good happen to her, such as finding money.

The only thing he could say was that Zhao Wan's health and complexion had improved considerably.

But rather than attributing that to Blessing, Yin Yunze felt it was the result of his feeding her!

With Yin Yunze providing for her and the girl eating three healthy, balanced meals a day, it would have been a wonder if her health had not improved and her complexion had not grown rosy!

After several tests produced no results, Yin Yunze treated Blessing as a trap skill and shelved it.

And more than the skills' impracticality, what rankled Yin Yunze was that, for the time being, they could only be used in this world.

After returning to the modern world, Yin Yunze could sense the existence of the Power of Incense Offerings. But aside from connecting to this world, he could not use any of the skills at all.

Or, more precisely, the necessary conditions to activate them were missing, so he could not use them in reality.

After all, whenever Yin Yunze tried to use them in reality, he could feel the Power of Incense Offerings surging in response.

But every time, it was as though it had run into some obstruction, and he could not use them normally as he could in that other world.

After turning it over in his mind, Yin Yunze thought it might have something to do with his having no believers in reality.

That left Yin Yunze with a problem.

Because he could not use his skills, it was difficult for Yin Yunze to get people in reality to believe in him.

But it was precisely because he had no believers that Yin Yunze could not use his skills.

Relying solely on the offering and bestowal ritual, if he transferred too few things, people might take him for a magician performing tricks.

But if he transferred too many... Yin Yunze did not want to become the focus of other people's attention just yet.

All Yin Yunze could do was console himself with the thought that this was only his first upgrade.

After another upgrade, perhaps he would be able to use them in reality!

Thus, although Yin Yunze was a little resentful, he also had something to strive for.

First, he would set himself a small goal: being able to use Illusion Technique in reality!

With some effort, maybe he could bring it into reality after his next upgrade!

Thinking this, Yin Yunze returned to the company.

Just as he sat down and prepared to start his afternoon work, Yin Yunze suddenly heard someone calling in his ear:

"Lord Fox Immortal! Please show mercy and save my whole family, young and old!"

Putting aside the work he had yet to start, Yin Yunze turned his attention back to the dilapidated temple.

There, Yin Yunze saw a young woman standing inside the dilapidated temple.

Yin Yunze also had some recollection of this woman.

Of course, it was not because she was so beautiful that Yin Yunze had lustful thoughts. It was purely because the woman belonged to one of the households Yin Yunze had noticed before, one that could no longer put food in the pot.

He had an idea of the situation, but Yin Yunze still asked a question to which he already knew the answer.

"For what reason dost thou call upon me?"

Hearing Yin Yunze actually respond, the woman hurriedly knelt and knocked her head against the ground three times with loud thuds. "Lord Fox Immortal, my family has already eaten all the grain we stored last year! I heard that Lord Fox Immortal can conjure grain! Please show us mercy and save the lives of my whole family, young and old!"

"Finally."

Although he had already guessed, actually hearing her say it still left Yin Yunze with a trace of complicated feelings that were difficult to put into words.