I picked up skill fragments in the demon world.

Chapter 132 The secret that will cost you your head!
"It's done. The boy won't be able to get out of bed for at least two months. When the time comes, you can go to study and no one will disturb you." The fox fairy Nannan said, her voice full of pride. This is the kind of thing she loves to do the most and she is also the best at it.

Zhang Chen nodded in satisfaction and signaled the fox fairy Nannan to cast an illusion to cover his figure. Then Zhang Chen turned into a bat and left.

As for Chen Sanliang, Zhang Chen couldn't do anything to him for the sake of his master. He could break Chen Sanliang's legs, but then wouldn't his master still have to serve him? Wouldn't his master still be the one in trouble?
Zhang Chen returned to the Taoist temple. It was already dark. He went back to the attic and saw the little boy practicing his boxing skills hard.

Seeing Zhang Chen coming back, Xiao Douding said unhappily, "Zhang Chen, where did you go this afternoon? Why haven't you been seen all afternoon?"

Zhang Chen did not answer Xiao Douding's words, but took out two paper bags from his sleeve and handed them to Xiao Douding. There were barbecue and preserved fruits in them.

The little boy's eyes suddenly lit up. He ignored Zhang Chen and sat on a stool nearby to eat with relish.

Zhang Chen then took out a wooden basin, filled it with fine sand, and moved it into the house. He then used a stick to draw ghost symbols in the sand.

He wanted to study the magical effects of the talisman. The two talismans seemed to be somewhat mysterious, otherwise they would not have been seen by the ancient gods.

The little kid was eating barbecue when he saw Zhang Chen paddling in the wooden basin with a stick. He came over and asked curiously, "What are you paddling?"

"I think you can read now." Zhang Chen stopped drawing the runes. The two runes were really complicated, extremely complicated, with interlaced lines. If he wanted to draw them in one go, he had to find the pattern. He had to be calm and look for the pattern quietly by himself. Having Little Bean beside him would affect his efficiency. It would be better to find an excuse to give Little Bean something to do!
Ever since Zhang Chen got on the right track in his cultivation and had a deep understanding of the way of Qigong, he did not think that the temple master's idea of ​​not letting the little kid learn to read was correct.

He did not think that literacy would affect one's spiritual well-being. He felt that what the abbot had said before was nonsense, meant only to fool those who did not know the subject.

"But the temple master doesn't allow me to learn to read..." The little kid looked at Zhang Chen and stopped eating the dried meat.

Cheng Yu was troubled when he heard this: "But Master said that learning to read would hinder my cultivation."

"Do you believe me or him? If you believe me, I will teach you to read secretly. If you believe the abbot, just pretend I didn't say anything." Zhang Chen said.

He suspected that the abbot might not be able to read. After all, no matter how he looked at it, he did not look like a noble.

It is easier to mislead people if they are illiterate and do not understand the truth.

"I don't think what the abbot said is necessarily right! Anyway, I can read. If you want to learn characters, you can come and ask me." Zhang Chen looked at the little kid. He couldn't force the little kid to learn characters. What he could do was to teach the little kid without reservation when he wanted to learn characters.

The little kid was chewing on the dried meat, and was in a dilemma. He looked at Zhang Chen eagerly, and finally put the dried meat on the table. He looked at Zhang Chen seriously, "Junior brother, I want to learn to read!"

Zhang Chen’s change in attitude towards the little girl is very strange. Wasn’t this girl wavering before and refusing to learn to read when her master told her not to?
"Since you taught me to read, I will believe what you say. You are the best person in the world to me. If I don't believe you, who else can I believe?" The little kid blinked.

Zhang Chen looked at the little kid with his eyes and said jokingly, "I treat you best? What about the temple master?"

Xiao Douding scratched his head: "I don't know, I always feel like something is not right."

Zhang Chen smiled when he heard this, put down the stick in his hand, and said to the little kid, "I have a simple way to learn to read. If you can learn it, it will be much easier to read and write."

Zhang Chen held the little girl in his arms and began to teach her to read pinyin.

However, the talent of the little boy really shocked Zhang Chen. He finally knew how his master felt after he learned to read for seven days.

The little kid was even more exaggerated than him. He only taught him twice and the little kid had already memorized it all.

Then after Zhang Chen taught Xiao Douding the technique of combining pinyin, Xiao Douding directly ran to the light nearby with the pinyin book annotated by Han Suzhen and started practicing on his own.

"Is this photographic memory? The little girl can master the power of transformation at such a young age. I still underestimated her talent. As expected of someone who can see strange things directly, this little girl is abnormal." Zhang Chen scratched his head. He only knew his own business. He was a fake genius, but the little girl was a real genius.

While the little kid was reading under the lamp, Zhang Chen continued to ponder how to draw talismans in the sand basin. He probably knew some of the tricks of drawing talismans, such as that the talisman must be drawn in one go without any interruption.

There is a saying about the art of drawing talismans, which is "If you don't know how to draw talismans, you will make ghosts and gods laugh. If you know how to draw talismans, you will make ghosts and gods scream."

The most important thing in drawing talismans is the stroke order. The stroke order determines the efficacy of the talisman and whether it can be drawn successfully. It is the key to success.

Zhang Chen had no teacher, so if he wanted to draw the talisman, he could only ponder and experiment stroke by stroke by stroke. Fortunately, his mind was very useful now, and his brain was as clear as the moon in the sky. Thinking about the stroke order of the talisman, he had some clues.

Zhang Chen was not an ordinary person. He tried one stroke after another until midnight. The little boy yawned and picked up the book and walked upstairs: "I'm sleepy, I'm going to bed. You should go to bed early, so as not to be late for the morning class."

After Xiao Douding finished speaking, he left, leaving Zhang Chen to continue studying the talisman.

"No, what I drew is wrong! How can a talisman have more than twenty strokes? I must have drawn it wrong." Zhang Chen counted the strokes of the talisman he drew, and then thought about the talisman drawing videos on the Internet in his previous life. It seemed that none of them had more than five strokes.

After thinking for a while without finding the key, and seeing that it was getting dark, Zhang Chen simply threw down the wooden stick, then sifted the yellow sand flat, leaving no trace, and then got up and went back to the bed to meditate.

First he practiced Qi, and after completing the cultivation of magical powers, he began to visualize restoring his soul.

"To cultivate mana, one needs to consume the energy of spirit, energy and spirit, while to cultivate the great way of the soul, one uses the energy to nourish the spirit. The two are poles apart and going in opposite directions."

However, Zhang Chen’s cultivation is still shallow, and he doesn’t know where his strengths and weaknesses lie.

The next morning

Xiao Douding yawned and pulled Zhang Chen off the bed. Then the two of them lazily walked to the square and continued their daily morning class. Then they washed up and had breakfast. Breakfast was a bowl of porridge, which tasted bland and had no taste at all.

After breakfast, Zhang Chen looked at Xiao Douding, and Xiao Douding also looked at Zhang Chen: "Are you full?"

"It's hard to believe you can be full with just this little food." Zhang Chen said unhappily.

"The law enforcement elder is watching the kitchen now... I have an idea for how to get enough food, I wonder if you dare?" said the little bean.

"Hmm? Is there anything I dare not do?" Zhang Chen said.

"Follow me!" The little kid pulled Zhang Chen, sneaking around to avoid everyone along the way, and came to a remote hall in the backyard. Inside the hall was a statue of a man wearing a yellow robe with rice ears everywhere.

There is only one sculpture in the entire hall. It is of a man wearing a yellow scarf and holding a sword in his hand. He seems to be exorcising demons and looks very majestic.

The most important thing is that there are fresh fruits and plates of cakes in front of the sculpture altar, which are still emitting steam.

"This is the main hall of our Huangtian Dao Patriarch. Except for the first and fifteenth days of the lunar month when all the disciples in the academy need to offer sacrifices, no one will come in and disturb us. But the offerings in the hall need to be replaced every day." The little bean acted as if he had come to his own home. He picked up the pastries on the plate and stuffed them directly into his mouth. Then his cheeks puffed up, and he looked like a little hamster, which was particularly cute.

"Why aren't you eating?" After eating a piece of cake, Cheng Yu saw Zhang Chen still standing there and greeted him.

Zhang Chen was not polite and walked forward to pick up one of the plates. The two of them ate with relish. Zhang Chen even felt thirsty and picked up a pear to moisten his mouth.

The little kid also learned it well and started eating the pear.

Just as the two were eating happily, there was a sound of footsteps outside the door. Zhang Chen and Xiao Douding, who were eating pears and cakes, were both startled. They looked at each other, and Xiao Douding said unhappily, "You're not that unlucky, are you? No one comes to the Patriarch's Hall except when the cakes and offerings are changed every day. How come someone came today? It's really weird."

After saying that, the little kid took the plate and went directly under the curtain of the altar.

Zhang Chen looked at the altar with some shadow in his heart. If he heard any secrets that he shouldn't hear, wouldn't he be in trouble again?

But when he looked closely at the hall, he found no hiding place. There was a hiding place behind the statue, but he couldn't climb up there.

As the footsteps got closer, Zhang Chen had no choice but to get under the curtain. The next moment, he saw two figures blocking the light at the gate, then walked in from outside the gate and stood in the hall without saying a word.

Zhang Chen looked through the gap and his pupils couldn't help but shrink. He recognized one of the men. He was the bastard who had embezzled his money in Mr. Wuliu's thatched cottage.

"Master, please don't be angry. It's all my fault. I have returned home and asked my father to help solve the problem. As long as we trick that woman out of the Taoist temple, she will never have the chance to come to the Taoist temple alive and cause trouble again." At this time, a young man said in fear and trepidation.

"I'm not angry? Do you know how much trouble you have caused this time? How much impact has it caused on Huang Tiandao's reputation? If you delay the prince's plan, let alone you, even if your father, Mr. Wuliu, is here, he will not have enough heads to chop off." At this time, a majestic middle-aged man spoke.

"Master, don't worry. I will stop what I did and will never let that woman talk nonsense again." The young man knelt on the ground and swore to the sky.

"That woman is pregnant with your child. How could you bear to do that to her?" the middle-aged man replied slowly.

"For the prince's plan, I can even sacrifice my life, not to mention the fetus in my belly!" The young man said in a cold voice.

"Yes, I am very pleased that you have such a heart. They are just children. He can just find some women to give birth to dozens of them in the future. It is not worth regretting." The middle-aged man agreed with his words:

"The prince asked us to go undercover in Huang Tiandao, in order to explore the secret of Huang Tiandao's deification and find out the secret of immortality. This is a major matter concerning our future. If we make the slightest mistake, we will all lose our heads. Nothing can affect our main plan."

“But Huang Tiandao has kept the secret of Conferred Gods very secret. I have been in the Taoist temple for five years, but I haven’t found any clues.” The young man said with a look of grievance.

“The Conferred Gods is the core secret of the Huangtian Dao. It can only be passed down through direct transmission and with great merit. Not to mention you, even I can’t grasp that secret. But now there is an opportunity before you. If you can seize this opportunity, you will definitely be able to obtain this great secret.” said the middle-aged man.

"Master, please give me some advice." The young man said hurriedly.

"The upper echelons of Huang Tian Dao want to hold a big event, and want to select a few seeds to infiltrate the Inspection Office and the imperial court as undercover agents. This time, in order to complete the grand plan, the upper echelons have invested heavily, bestowing twelve mysteries and selecting twelve seeds, who will become the backbone of Huang Tian Dao and control the future of Huang Tian Dao. And my Huang Li Temple has been allocated a special mystery without a grade!"

"This time, the higher-ups have invested a lot of money and used all their resources. As long as someone obtains the secret and becomes a god, it will be easy for them to join the Inspection Office. As long as they pass the identity verification of the Inspection Office, it is a sure thing to blend in. You must know that gods are extremely rare, and even the Inspection Office cannot refuse them. As long as you blend in, with the identity of a god, you will definitely be able to step into the upper echelons of the Inspection Office in the future and add strength to my Huang Tian Dao's plan."

“And what the prince means is that we must obtain that mystery and become one of the twelve seeds of Huang Tiandao. Then, being a double agent would not be bad either,” said the middle-aged man.

"But how do we get that mysterious thing?" the young man asked.

"The higher-ups have already set the rules, and it's probably going to be decided by a duel. We'll select disciples of the appropriate age to be undercover, and have them compete. Whoever has better martial arts skills will get the mysterious item. You've already cultivated your hidden power, and your age is just right, so this is perfect for you. It's designed specifically for you," said the middle-aged man.

"Disciple will work hard and will never miss this opportunity." said the young man.

"Haha~ Get up and deal with that woman. Don't let it affect your reputation and don't bring trouble to the Taoist temple." said the middle-aged man.

"Master, rest assured. I will definitely do a great job." The man kept making promises.

As he was talking, the middle-aged man looked at the altar and saw the mess on it. Not only were the fruits gone, but the cakes were all gone, too, even the tray was gone.

(End of this chapter)