Taoist priest goes to America

The old man's body was trembling. He placed the receipt on the counter, took off his reading glasses, wiped his eyes with his sleeve, then put them back on and carefully examined the receipt with trembling hands.

He had searched for many years; he couldn't be mistaken. He first asked in Jiangxi, then in Shichuan, then in Funan, but no one knew how to draw it, and no one had ever seen a complete one. Some said it was fake, a counterfeit made during the Republic of China era; others said it belonged to a lost branch of the family that had been passed down for a few generations before dying out.

Now he finally saw the complete one. It was drawn on this crumpled receipt with an ordinary ballpoint pen.

The old man's hand moved slowly across the receipt, tracing each stroke of the talisman.

Ang Lee finally spoke.

Have you seen enough?

The old man raised his head and looked at Li An, feeling something stuck in his chest, unable to go up or down.

He opened his mouth, looked at Li An, as if he wanted to say a lot, but in the end he only managed to squeeze out one sentence: "You...you...whose disciple are you?"

Ang Lee did not answer. He stretched out his hand, placed two fingers on one corner of the receipt, and pulled it back.

The old man instinctively gripped the other side of the receipt tightly, not letting go. The two of them, separated by the counter, stared at each other for a long time, each clutching the thin receipt.

The old man let go first.

Ang Lee folded the receipt and stuffed it back into his pocket. "I'm not interested in talking to you about it."

The old man stood behind the counter, his hands resting on the glass surface, his head bowed, his shoulders rising and falling slightly. He took a deep breath and then slowly exhaled.

When he looked up again, the fawning smile on his face had completely disappeared, replaced by respect—a reverence and submission to the real thing that only someone who had been in this business for decades would have.

"Handsome guy," he said in Mandarin, his voice low, "I've really seen something new today."

He walked around to the front of the counter and stood face to face with Ang Lee. There were only two steps between them.

"My surname is Chen," the old man said. "Chen Houde. This shop has been open for forty years, and I have been making paper offerings for fifty years."

Chen Houde extended his hand to Li An, his hand covered in calluses. Li An glanced at the hand but did not shake it.

"So you've been making paper offerings for fifty years, and just now even I, an insider, couldn't tell the difference between the real and fake?"

Chen Houde blushed slightly, awkwardly withdrew his hand, and coughed lightly.

"I'm not lying, I'm just... I'm just testing you." His Mandarin had a heavy Cantonese accent.

"Nine out of ten people who come to my shop don't know anything about it. You asked for the catalyst for a curse right off the bat, so I... I just want to see how much you actually know."

"Now you know, right?" Ang Lee put his hands back into his sleeves.

"Do you believe I'm no match for you in terms of skill?"

"I believe you, I believe you." Chen Houde nodded vigorously, his eyes wide open as he stared expectantly at Li An. He looked like an old man desperately trying to appear sincere, but his shrewdness was impossible to hide.

"So, do you actually have the incantation catalyst I need?" Li An asked.

The old man nodded, then immediately turned and walked to the back of the shelf behind the counter. But instead of pulling the locked drawer, he squatted down and moved a few bundles of yellow paper from the bottom shelf, revealing a brick of a different color on the wall.

He reached his hand into the crack between the bricks, pried it open, and pulled the brick out. Behind the brick was a small hidden compartment containing a wooden box.

The wooden box is rectangular and unpainted. A small yin-yang symbol is engraved on the lid, surrounded by a ring of runes. The corners of the box are covered with copper sheets, which have turned green, but the covering is very tight without any gaps.

Chen Houde took out the wooden box and placed it on the counter. His hand lingered on the lid for a moment, then he opened it.

He took a palm-sized black velvet bag from the box; the bag's opening was tied with a red string. He placed the bag on the counter, untied the red string, and emptied its contents.

Ten small pieces of wood of different colors. Each piece is about one and a half fingers long, and the wood is as thick as a mahjong tile. Most of them are dark black in color and have a smooth surface with a layer of patina.

Ang Lee picked up a piece and examined it under the light. The wood grain was so fine it was almost invisible. He smelled it and noticed a strange, sweet aroma.

"That's interesting," Ang Lee said.

"This old jujube tree, over a hundred years old, is planted next to the grave."

"The trees should be felled at midnight when there is no moonlight or on a cloudy day. No strangers should be seen while felling the trees. The felled trees should be immediately placed in a shady earthen cellar to dry in the shade, so that the wood does not come into contact with sunlight."

"This is an old shady paulownia tree. Ancient books say that the phoenix perches on the paulownia tree. Trees that grow in the sun are called yang wood, while those that grow in cemeteries or shady pits become shady paulownia trees."

"This piece of wood was used as burial material in an old coffin and was unearthed decades later. It is the wood from an old coffin and is believed to carry the most resentment."

"This is a rotten beam from an old house. It's the main beam of an abandoned or haunted house that has been uninhabited for over thirty years. It's the main beam of a house where people have died violently, hanged themselves, or died of chronic illness and childlessness."

"The surface of this wood is a dull brown and hollow, the core is black and dark, the wood grain is seeping with dark yellow water, and it has been damp and moldy for many years due to being stored in the cracks between beams and pillars."

……

Li An nodded. These are all commonly used materials in witchcraft.

Chen Houde's lips twitched, trying to suppress the twitching that he couldn't quite control. He had originally wanted to show off his knowledge to Li An, but Li An had already blurted it all out.

Ang Lee turned the wooden piece over and saw that several tiny characters were engraved on the back. It was a miniature talisman with strokes so fine that they were almost invisible.

"The person who carved the symbols has good skills," Ang Lee said casually, like an expert commenting on the skills of a newcomer.

Although this level of skill isn't particularly impressive in a fantasy world, the craftsmanship of this world has already exceeded his expectations.

"Handsome, is ten dollars enough?" Chen Houde asked cautiously, afraid that Li An might not be satisfied.

"That's enough," Li An said, without refusing. He put the ten spell-casting blocks into his pocket, along with the cinnabar, yellow paper, and velvet bag. The sleeve pockets of his Taoist robe were bulging.

He turned and walked towards the door. As he passed the old man, the old man reached out to stop him, but quickly withdrew his hand.

"Could you leave me the talisman you drew?" the old man asked, looking at him with pleading eyes.

Li An looked down at that hand. It was a hand that had been making paper offerings for decades and touching countless talismans, and its eyes were full of hope.

Li An walked back to the counter, picked up the receipt, and finished drawing the remaining talismans. Not just the talisman head, he drew a complete "General Edict of the Three Pure Ones," starting with five strokes, ending with three turns, and inserting a hidden "edict" character in the middle.

This talisman was used for consecration in the ancient Maoshan sect, but the technique was later lost. He learned it from an old Taoist priest in the fantasy world. The old Taoist priest said that this talisman was passed down from his master's master, and there were fewer than three people in the entire Maoshan sect who knew how to draw it.

He placed the receipt on the counter and pushed it over.

The old man picked up the receipt and stared at it under the light for a long time. His lips moved, as if he were silently reciting the direction of the strokes.

He folded the receipt, but instead of putting it in his pocket, he turned around, walked to the shelf, and tucked it into the old ledger.