I'm an antique shop owner, so it's reasonable for me to know some magic

Chapter 363: Confucianism and Taoism are not clearly distinguished, the legend of the empty man
noon the next day.

Katie was frowning while sleeping, showing signs of waking up.

hungry.

This body had not consumed any food for nearly sixteen hours, and the hunger in her stomach urged her to find food to fill her stomach.

But the warm environment is really nostalgic, especially in the cold winter.

The most primitive desires of human beings - appetite and sleep - are now fighting fiercely against each other.

After a while, Katie finally got up from the bed.

Because a special fragrance was wafting in from outside the room.

The glutton in her stomach was completely aroused, and she almost instinctively wrapped the quilt around herself, put on her slippers and went outside.

The bright environment made Katie a little more awake.

It's sunshine.

The sun is a rare thing in winter, especially in a place like London where you may not see a sunny day for half a month.

The light is not very strong, but it seems to be full of warmth. Just one glance at it can relieve the coldness in your body.

As soon as we woke up, we saw rare good weather, which immediately set the stage for a good day.

Katie smiled and took a deep breath.

It was at this moment that she smelled the source of the fragrance.

Turning around, I saw four dishes and one soup on the table.

"When you wake up, sit down and eat."

Su Fan's voice came from the front.

The latter walked out of the kitchen holding a set of tea sets and hot water, sat down at the dining table, and then began to brew tea skillfully.

Pour boiling water into the cup to warm it up. After cleaning the inside, put in tea leaves and then pour another round of boiling water.

As Su Fan moved, the refreshing aroma of tea was mixed with the aroma of delicious food.

"Did you do all this, Sue?"

Katie took a look at the dishes on the table that she had never seen before and asked with some surprise.

Su Fan nodded and placed three cups of brewed tea in front of him and on both sides.

There were all the plates and cutlery, and in addition to Katie's and his own, there was another one that was naturally from Tom.

But when I looked around, I didn't see him.

"Where's Tom?"

"He went to buy some daily necessities and will be back before the food gets cold."

I have been here for a while now, and bank procedures and the like have been completely sorted out.

Thanks to Alice's hard work, the antique shop's income never stopped, and it was no problem to transfer tens of thousands of dollars.

In the past, Su Fan supported the antique shop with exorcism commissions. Now that it has been running well, he finally received some rewards one day, which made Su Fan feel very emotional.

Katie pulled out a chair and sat down, looking at these simple yet extraordinary home-cooked meals, swallowed her saliva, and then picked up the bowl and chopsticks.

As for why I learned to use bowls and chopsticks, it was naturally because I couldn't stand the infamous British cuisine and fell in love with Chinese food, so I learned it on my own.

Originally, she wanted to wait for Tom to come back and eat together, but she was really hungry.

Katie felt so hungry that she could swallow a whole cow!
But after taking a look, she was full of confusion.

"What's this……"

"Potato."

Potato?

Katie picked up the thing that was cut into thin strips with chopsticks and put it into her mouth.

Are there other ways to eat potatoes besides frying them into French fries or steaming them?
Because they are thin and fine, the potatoes are fully flavored and very delicious.

"What do you usually eat when you go out?"

Su Fan looked at the other person and started to eat faster, so he asked casually.

"Fish and chips...lettuce and fruit salad...ham sandwich..."

Hearing this, Su Fan looked at the other person with an expression full of pity.

Traditional white people’s food is simple and convenient, but it tastes bad, is high in calories and makes you fat.

Among European countries, except Italy which has a relatively good catering culture, the others are terrible.

French baguettes and German dry bread are so hard that they must be sawed open with professional tools, and one bite can stretch the neck half a mile.

It’s not that high-end Western food is not delicious, French food and the like are also good, but generally speaking they are very expensive.

People eat for food.

With the same amount of money, the working people in the big Eastern country are indeed the best at preparing food.

Katie picked up a little here and a little there, her movements were very graceful, but her twitching brows and the occasional look of ecstasy were enough to prove that she was enjoying the meal very much.

"If you're almost done eating, you can go check if the soufflé in the oven is ready."

Su Fan took a sip of tea.

"Don't you like desserts? You should have some after the meal. But the only ingredients we can use are the leftover eggs from cooking, so you'll have to make do with this."

Su Fan doesn’t hate desserts. Which child doesn’t like eating candy when he is a child?

However, the donuts and chocolate in America contain lethal amounts of syrup and frosting, which can send a person’s blood sugar skyrocketing after just one bite.

The antique shop tried to save as much as possible at the time, so they did not buy an oven.

"This is really..."

Katie sighed in her heart while eating.

She had never eaten such delicious Chinese food, and she never thought that Su Fan would take the initiative to prepare lunch.

"I remember that in ancient China there was a saying that a gentleman should stay away from the kitchen. I thought that someone as traditional and full of ancient style as you would not do such things..."

"The original meaning of 'a gentleman stays away from the kitchen' is that a person of good character has a reverence for life in his heart, and cannot bear to hear the sound of killing living things in the kitchen, and when he sees that scene, he deliberately keeps a distance."

“It doesn’t mean that a gentleman can’t enter the kitchen to cook, nor does it mean that being a chef is a lowly profession.”

"Most of what you have seen is the ambiguity caused by some pampered children from aristocratic families misinterpreting the original text."

After Su Fan finished speaking, he did not forget to add one more sentence.

"Also, I graduated from Caltech with a degree in computer science. I'm not some old-fashioned guy."

After hearing the last sentence, Katie suddenly showed a trace of confusion in her eyes.

Shouldn't someone with this level of education be employed by an Internet giant in Silicon Valley?

Who would have thought that this person would return home to inherit the antique shop and become an exorcist Taoist priest?
When Su Fan saw the other person like this, he chuckled in his heart.

There are so many people working across fields. There is someone who graduated in chemistry from Peking University and ended up being a writer. Is there anything wrong with that?

An exorcist who doesn't want to be a store manager is not a good science and engineering guy.

“Reading classics without a teacher’s guidance often leads to jokes.”

"If you have any questions, you can take this opportunity to discuss them with me."

Hearing this, Katie, who had just finished her meal, immediately became interested and told her all the questions that arose during her self-study.

"The Master stood by a river and said: 'The water flows on like a stream, it never stops day or night.' What does this mean?"

"Tell me what you understand first."

"As long as you are strong enough, the bodies of your enemies will flow down the river day and night."

"…No. He was just lamenting that time flies by and that we should study hard and cherish our youth."

"What about hearing the truth in the morning and dying in the evening? If I find out the way to your home in the morning, you will die in the evening. I think you are practicing this sentence in your own body."

"That's not right either. It means that if I seek the truth and the Way in the morning, it will be worth it if I die in the evening."

Su Fan suddenly felt his temples throbbing. "Anything else?"

"Also, a gentleman cannot be respected if he is not serious. If he does not use heavy hands on his enemies, he cannot show his might..."

"……What's wrong?"

Katie looked at Su Fan who put down the teacup and began to rub his eyebrows, and asked cautiously.

"Is this all your own understanding?"

"Ah."

"You understand it very well. Don't teach yourself next time."

Su Fan found that it was too difficult for these people to understand the essence of Chinese culture.

"These are all Confucian things. Why would you, who wants to learn Taoism, think about them?"

"Isn't Confucius a Taoist? I remember reading about his conversation with Laozi, and then I downloaded some stuff from the Confucius Institute's official website."

"you……"

No wonder you can’t tell fortunes accurately. If you can understand the hexagrams, you will be going against the will of heaven.

I won't say anything if you read Xiaoyaoyou or something like that, but this Analects...

"The most important thing about learning knowledge is to organize and build a system afterwards. Can you tell fortunes and predict good and bad luck now? I don't think you have that ability. You should first clarify your Confucianism, Taoism, and Taoism, and then consider other things."

Su Fan was silent for a long time, and finally uttered this suggestion.

After hearing this, Katie realized that she had made a big fool of herself, and took a sip of the tea beside her with some embarrassment.

It has a rich fragrance at first, and a sweet aftertaste, which is completely different from the tea bags we usually drink.

There is no such high-end tea at home, and Tom will not buy it. The only possibility is that Su Fan purchased it at his own expense.

It can be said that everything they have eaten and drank so far was funded by Su Fan.

In return, Katie felt more and more that her mission to ask for compensation was more important.

"I am back."

There was the sound of a door opening and Tom's voice.

The latter came back carrying large and small bags, with his hands full of plastic bags.

"Su, I brought back what you wanted."

"Thank you for your hard work. Sit down and eat. The food is not cold yet."

Su Fan stood up, took the plastic bag, opened it and checked it carefully. After confirming that it was correct, he placed it in different areas of the refrigerator according to the storage time.

If you didn’t have the New Year’s Eve dinner, make up for it with a good meal on New Year’s Day.

Many of the ingredients and New Year's goods are very authentic. It seems that Tom was not fooled by the people over there as a stupid foreigner.

Tom sat at the dining table and showed off all the remaining things in a whirlwind, and the whole process took no more than ten minutes.

"You are indeed like that, Sue."

After eating, Tom smacked his lips and gave great praise to Su Fan's cooking skills.

He also said this once during breakfast.

That’s right, Su Fan also made breakfast.

"I had to go to different places to get these things. It took some time, but fortunately, I didn't miss lunch time."

With Dinghaishenzhen at home, Tom can go out with peace of mind.

But to be honest, Tom still felt a little weird in his heart, as if his presence at home had affected their world of two.

Tom secretly glanced at his sister's expression, then looked at Su Fan who was drinking tea.

There didn't seem to be any romantic atmosphere between the two of them, as if what happened last night had never happened.

Did Katie forget?
"Have you heard of any strange cases in the outside world?"

Su Fan asked casually.

"No, it's quite normal."

"The murders that occurred on the outskirts of the community have been solved, and places like the monastery are quite peaceful."

"When I passed by the old woman I met last time, I heard people talking about her losing her voice. All the neighbors thought it was a good thing."

"Su, you have eliminated harm for the people."

"Oh, her."

The image of the noisy, self-important white lady emerged in Su Fan's mind.

It's strange that few people sympathize with her situation.

"Besides, I ran into an acquaintance on the way back."

"It was James whom we met in the police station that day..."

Tom recalled the scene and described it.

"The last time I saw him, he looked like an alcoholic homeless man. But after just a few days, he looked like an ordinary person."

"Did you take the initiative to greet the other party?"

Katie also heard Tom describe the details of what happened in the police station that day, and was deeply impressed by James, who respected all police officers very much.

"No, the other party called me."

Tom shook his head slightly.

"The daughter of his neighbor, a woman who lives alone, is missing and is now being looked for everywhere."

"Wouldn't it be better if he could just ask his friends in the police station for help with this kind of thing?"

"He felt that the police were too busy solving murders and many other criminal cases, and that it was not uncommon for teenagers to go missing. They might come back on their own in a couple of days, so he didn't want to trouble them to handle the case on a special basis."

James's answer was very reasonable.

"However, he also mentioned a strange legend..."

"What legend?"

Su Fan suddenly asked a question when he heard this.

Legends, ghost stories, and other terrifying information passed down from mouth to mouth may very likely contain real weirdness.

Even when the legend becomes widely spread to a certain extent, a new existence that is exactly the same as the legend will be born.

This is not alarmist.

Although the power of sentient beings' wishes sounds mysterious and unrealistic, it does exist.

"Sora."

Tom uttered these words, but suddenly he shuddered all over.

"It's just a very boring and simple rumor, similar to a fabricated urban legend."

"If you go to an empty bridge at night, you'll find an empty bottle on it."

“When you think of the empty man in your mind and blow the bottle, after a while you will be able to hear him coming towards you, and you may even think of him involuntarily.”

“The next day, you’ll see him following you around like a shadow.

And on the third night, he will find you."

"Gone?"

Katie saw Tom pause and immediately asked.

"That's it. It sounds very childish and vague, doesn't it? Like a crude story that adults use to scare children."

Tom shrugged.

"However, James was very serious when he talked about it, so I wrote it down carefully at the time."

(End of this chapter)