Talisman Making

After reaching a preliminary agreement, Yin Yunze returned control of the body to Zhao Wan and went back to the real world.

When he opened his eyes in bed, Yin Yunze was pleasantly surprised to find that his body in the real world showed no abnormalities from the Spirit Descent.

But after experiencing that body empowered by the Land God's divinity, Yin Yunze had mixed feelings about his frail, powerless body in the real world.

For a moment, Yin Yunze even wanted to return to that world and perform Spirit Descent on Zhao Wan again, just to experience the enchanting allure of that divinity once more.

Fortunately, Yin Yunze could still tell which world was real.

After accepting the reality that he was just a mortal, Yin Yunze climbed out of bed.

After a quick wash, Yin Yunze went downstairs and bought a steamer basket of buns. As he ate, he considered whether he should make some preparations.

Investigating the source of that malice carried a certain amount of risk.

Whether for Zhao Wan's sake or his own, Yin Yunze wanted to spend some money on something that would help him feel safer.

But after wandering around for a long while, Yin Yunze found he couldn't get his hands on anything truly useful on such short notice.

He considered buying a motorcycle for transportation, but never mind how difficult it would be for someone as small and delicate as Zhao Wan to ride one; there were also the rough roads of an ancient society...

Honestly, Yin Yunze figured that if she ran into danger and tried to flee on a motorcycle, the odds of dying in a crash would probably be greater than the odds of escaping with her life.

Having spent nearly half a day with nothing to show for it, Yin Yunze was about to head home and look online when he happened to spot a shop selling paper effigies.

That sight gave Yin Yunze an idea.

After running around and putting in quite a bit more effort, Yin Yunze finally bought all the yellow paper and cinnabar he needed and took them home.

Upon entering that world, Yin Yunze found that the scene before him this time was no longer the Fox Immortal Temple.

This time, Yin Yunze appeared in Sun Qin's home, where Zhao Wan and her mother were talking about something right in front of him.

Clearly, now that Zhao Wan had become Yin Yunze's anchor, the coordinates at which Yin Yunze entered this world had changed as well.

Of course, the change wasn't from the Fox Immortal Temple to Sun Qin's home, but to Zhao Wan, a living person.

The spiritual thread that had never broken since they connected was far more stable than the Fox Immortal Temple's tenuous coordinates.

"Lord Yi Yun? You're here!"

To Yin Yunze's surprise, before he could speak this time, Zhao Wan greeted him first, as though she could see him.

However, judging by Zhao Wan's unfocused eyes as she looked around, she could probably only sense Yin Yunze and couldn't see him in this state.

Clearly, this was also an ability to sense Yin Yunze that Zhao Wan had gained after becoming his anchor.

"Yes, I'm here." Yin Yunze didn't waste words and said directly, "Wan'er, may I borrow your body for a while?"

"Yes! Of course you can!"

Zhao Wan agreed to Yin Yunze's request without the slightest hesitation.

Sun Qin watched the scene with a somewhat complicated expression.

Over the past few hours, Sun Qin had given it a great deal of thought.

From a pragmatic standpoint, Zhao Wan becoming the only person Yin Yunze could use Spirit Descent on meant that she held a unique, irreplaceable position. As long as nothing else went wrong, no one could shake the mother and daughter's standing in Clear Creek Village.

But as a mother, seeing her own daughter turn into another person right in front of her naturally left her with mixed feelings.

Yin Yunze couldn't spare much attention for Sun Qin's feelings, though. After all, this was obviously going to happen many times during this period.

If he worried about Sun Qin's feelings every time, Yin Yunze might as well not use Spirit Descent at all.

After receiving Zhao Wan's consent, he directly possessed her.

After that brief sensation of weightlessness, Yin Yunze once again set foot on the ground.

Feeling the power of the earth veins strengthening him and the Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi swirling around him, Yin Yunze felt comfortable all over, as though he had inexhaustible strength. It made a striking contrast with his less-than-healthy body in the real world.

Yin Yunze didn't indulge in the sensation, however. He was here to get something done, after all.

Coming to the table, Yin Yunze no longer needed to rely on anyone else. He simply closed his eyes and brought the cinnabar, yellow paper, brush, and inkstone he had prepared beside him in the real world onto the table in the room.

Yin Yunze put the cinnabar into the inkstone and mixed it into ink, then picked up the brush, dipped it, and wrote the character for "illusion" on the yellow paper.

As he finished the final stroke, Yin Yunze simultaneously used the Land God's divinity to draw upon Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi, turn it into an Illusion Technique, and seal it inside the talisman paper.

This was what Yin Yunze had thought of when he saw the paper effigy shop earlier: he could seal the Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi versions of his skills into talisman paper.

After all, many films and dramas featured temple keepers and spirit mediums using talisman paper to cast the Law Techniques of gods.

What Yin Yunze intended to do now was something similar: use Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi to seal the skills he possessed inside talisman paper.

It looked like the Taoist practice of drawing talismans, but there was a tremendous difference in their fundamental nature.

Taoist talisman drawing emphasized the unity of heaven and man, using talismans to draw upon the power of heaven and earth.

What Yin Yunze did was much simpler. He merely used the Land God's divinity to turn Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi into his own skills, then sealed them inside talisman paper.

A simpler analogy was that Taoist talisman drawing was like using the art of talisman making to borrow money from heaven and earth.

Yin Yunze, on the other hand, was the Land God, so the Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi in this area was already money at his disposal.

Now, Yin Yunze was simply turning that money into cash that could circulate, then letting others spend it.

The difficulty of the two naturally could not be mentioned in the same breath.

On the other hand, as a talisman maker's skill grew more refined, the amount of money they could borrow would only increase.

Yin Yunze, however, could only spend as much money as he had. He couldn't borrow a single cent of what didn't belong to him.

Moreover, if Yin Yunze lost the Land God's divinity, that money would no longer belong to him, and he would lose the ability to use it.

To put it plainly, this was an unconventional application of the Land God's divinity.

Yin Yunze wasn't a greedy person, though. As long as it worked, he was more than satisfied.

After the skill was sealed inside, the character talisman looked ordinary at first glance, but a closer look revealed what seemed to be a glimmer of flowing light.

Though he hadn't used it yet, Yin Yunze could feel, as he held the illusion character talisman, that he could activate it at any time.

After sensing it carefully for a moment, Yin Yunze couldn't help nodding in satisfaction.

The success of this idea had clearly given Yin Yunze another method at his disposal.

But it wasn't enough for Yin Yunze to be able to use it himself. He also wanted to see whether it could be used by mortals.

He tried using the Land God's divinity to draw upon incense offerings and make some adjustments to the illusion character talisman, then prepared to have Sun Qin try it. When he turned around, however, Yin Yunze saw Sun Qin frowning at the character he had written.

If Yin Yunze wasn't mistaken, he seemed to have caught a hint of disdain in Sun Qin's eyes.

Silently turning back to look at the brush-written character on the illusion talisman, which looked like a dog had scrawled it, Yin Yunze couldn't help grumbling inwardly.

I'm a modern person, so what's wrong with my brush calligraphy being a little ugly?!

Even so, Yin Yunze wisely put the illusion character talisman away, set down the brush, and said to Sun Qin, "You write them. First, write ten with the character for illusion, ten with the character for healing, ten with the character for fire, and ten with the character for expulsion!"

Unlike Taoist talismans, for these divine technique character talismans, it didn't matter who wrote them or what they wrote. All that ever mattered was what skill Yin Yunze, the deity, sealed into the character talisman, so naturally there weren't so many rules to observe.

He had them write different characters only to make them easier to tell apart and avoid mistakes in the rush.

So, never mind that the person writing them wasn't Yin Yunze; even going without yellow paper and cinnabar would be fine.

If he really didn't care about appearances, Yin Yunze could pluck a blade of grass at random and seal a skill into it, then toss the grass to fend off enemies all the same.

But he was already the Land God, so naturally Yin Yunze couldn't be that slapdash. He had to give it at least a little sense of ceremony, didn't he?

Most importantly, how could tossing out a random blade of grass possibly look as impressive as tossing out a yellow paper talisman?

With a wave of his hand, a sheet of yellow paper shot out and transformed into a skill!

Just imagining that scene was cool!