Chapter 6 introduces the art of deception and the charlatan's ultimate skill.
Lin Jinshui racked his brains all night for a way to leave Lin Jianyu temporarily, but also to ensure that she would not die during his absence. Finally, at dawn, he came up with a theoretically feasible method, but whether it would actually work depended on the practice.
The solution was to have Lin Jianyu carry his blood with him at all times.
Strictly speaking, what Lin Jianyu couldn't live without wasn't him, but his blood.
As long as he collects some blood and puts it in a container for Lin Jianyu to carry with her, she can drink it whenever she feels unwell. This way, he can leave her briefly to find her food.
Whether this method is feasible depends on how long it takes for his blood to lose its therapeutic effect on Lin Jianyu after leaving his body.
If he has enough time to find her food, then it's feasible; otherwise, it's not feasible, and he'll have to find a way to extend the time.
Now that we have a solution, the next step is to put it into practice.
He first took a small porcelain bottle from his bag, poured out the contents of the bottle, then pricked his finger and dripped blood into it. He stopped after dripping about half a bottle, put the cap on, and let it sit for an hour.
An hour later, he woke up the sleeping Lin Jianyu and gave her the little red fruit from yesterday.
Lin Jianyu, who had just woken up, looked completely bewildered. She must have opened her eyes wrong.
So she closed her eyes again.
Lin Jinshui thought she was about to fall asleep again, so he quickly shook her body a few more times.
"Wake up and eat the fruit."
"Master, do you want me to die?" Lin Jianyu, forced to open her eyes again in the wrong way, looked at the poisonous fruit he handed her with a dead fish face.
"Why do you ask that?" Lin Jinshui asked, looking puzzled.
"They've already handed me the poisonous fruit, and you're still asking me why I'm asking this?" Lin Jianyu was a little speechless.
"You've misunderstood. I'm not letting you eat the fruit to poison you, but to test your blood." Lin Jinshui told her the method he had thought of all night.
After realizing she had misunderstood, Lin Jianyu obediently accepted the fruit and ate it.
As she ate the fruit one by one, the familiar tightness in her chest returned. She stopped eating, took the small porcelain bottle that Lin Jinshui used to collect blood, and downed it in one gulp.
The blood, which had been left to stand for an hour, became a little viscous, but the taste remained unaffected and was still delicious. However, after drinking it, her condition did not improve; she found it increasingly difficult to breathe and her muscles began to spasm.
Seeing that her body was still twitching after she finished drinking the blood from the bottle, Lin Jinshui quickly pricked his finger and fed her some fresh blood.
After swallowing the fresh blood, Lin Jianyu's condition improved rapidly.
"Half an hour isn't enough. It seems I need to find a way to extend the time." He went out to find food. If he was fast, he could make it back in a little over an hour. If he was slow, it might take more than two hours. In other words, the blood's effective time needed to be at least three hours before he could leave with peace of mind.
"What can we do?" Lin Jianyu couldn't think of any other solutions, so she could only pin her hopes on him.
"There are still ways, but we don't know if they will work," Lin Jinshui said.
"What method?" Lin Jianyu asked.
"Draw talismans." Lin Jinshui said, already rummaging through his bag. Soon, he took out a dozen sheets of yellow paper, a jar of cinnabar, and a writing brush.
When Lin Jianyu saw these things, the first thought that flashed through his mind was: "Here comes the trickery of a charlatan: pretending to be a god or a ghost, swindling and cheating."
Is her master going to show her the secret skills of their sect?
Lin Jinshui took out yellow paper, cinnabar, and a brush, then took out the box he used to store dried fish. He then found a relatively flat stone and placed the items on it.
Open the small porcelain jar containing cinnabar, dip the tip of a brush into the cinnabar, look at the talisman pasted on the box containing dried fish, and write and draw on another talisman, trying to copy an identical talisman.
Why do I say "attempt"?
Because the talisman he drew and the talisman pasted on the box of dried fish were not exactly the same; they were completely unrelated.
"Master, do you not know how to draw talismans?"
"I can't draw this kind of talisman." He can still draw a few other talismans, although he's not very good at them.
"What kind of talisman is this? Why is it stuck on the box of dried fish?" Lin Jianyu had wanted to ask this question since the first time he took out the box of dried fish, but he had never asked it.
"The name of this talisman is not important. What is important is that it can prevent food from spoiling. It was drawn by my second nephew, your second senior brother, Yun Dandan," Lin Jinshui said.
Lin Jianyu didn't believe that a small talisman could prevent food from spoiling, thinking that the charlatans in their sect were so ruthless that they even fooled themselves: "As long as it's drawn exactly like the picture on it, it'll be fine, right?"
"These are runes, words, not patterns," Lin Jinshui corrected.
"I can't tell at all." The runes on the talisman paper are truly scribbles, especially the one that Lin Jinshui copied; you can't tell it's a character at all.
Lin Jinshui couldn't see it either, so he couldn't even draw a proper gourd by simply copying it.
"It doesn't have to be exactly the same, as long as the runes are drawn correctly. You also need to use spiritual power to enhance them when drawing them."
"So, Master doesn't even know what runes are?"
"If you know your teacher, you don't need to copy his paintings. His paintings are really abstract enough that you can't tell what runes he used at all." Lin Jinshui complained as he took out a new piece of yellow paper and continued to write and draw on it.
The drawn talisman was still a mess.
So he took a new sheet of yellow paper and repeated the same action.
And so, after wasting half a dozen sheets of yellow paper, he finally managed to draw a remarkably similar one.
"It should work. Let's give it a try."
If you say you'll give it a try, then give it a try.
He first pricked his finger and dripped the blood into a small porcelain bottle, then wrapped the entire bottle with talisman paper.
"This talisman is a bit too big." It's clearly not the same size as the small porcelain bottle.
"Just make do with these!" He spent half a day drawing the big ones, and it would take him three to five days to draw the small ones properly.
An hour later, Lin Jianyu resignedly picked up the small red fruit and ate them one after another to stave off hunger. When the familiar feeling of chest tightness returned, she picked up the small porcelain bottle that was tightly wrapped in talisman paper, opened the cap, and gulped it down.
The blood tasted good as always, but it also had no effect as always.
The lack of effect could mean either that the talisman was made to failure, or that the talisman only has a preservative effect on food and has no effect on his blood.
To verify whether the talisman only had a preservation effect on food, he took out a small dried fish to conduct an experiment.
Another hour later, he ate the dried fish. The taste hadn't changed much, but the texture had. It wasn't as crispy as when he first took it out of the box, which meant that the talisman he had drawn was a failure.
Lin Jianyu, who was starving, watched enviously as he ate the dried fish with a look of enjoyment, and suddenly suspected that his so-called experiment was just an excuse for him to eat alone.
"Master, you're not doing this weird experiment just to eat it all yourself, are you?"
Although Lin Jinshui did not do this experiment solely to keep the spoils to himself, he did indeed have that intention.
Therefore, upon hearing her ask that question, a hint of guilt involuntarily flashed across his face.
Seeing his guilty conscience, Lin Jianyu immediately strutted around like a victorious rooster, saying arrogantly, "You got pissed on by me! You just wanted to eat it all by yourself."
"It was expected, not that I peed myself," Lin Jinshui corrected.
"As long as the meaning is the same."
"They mean completely different things."
"I don't care, I want to eat dried fish too."
"I'll do the experiment later and then I'll give you some."
His waiting time is four hours later.
During those four hours, he first drew talismans, then bled the victims, and finally conducted experiments.
Yes, his second attempt at drawing the talisman also failed.
Throughout the process, apart from the time spent drawing talismans, they did not sit and wait idly. Instead, they walked deeper into the forest, looking for places with abundant spiritual energy and also searching for food.
Four hours later, under Lin Jinshui's expectant gaze, Lin Jianyu ate the dried fish that was used for the experiment.
"How is it? Has anything changed?" Lin Jinshui asked.
Lin Jianyu chewed on the dried fish while shaking his head.
"Nothing has changed?"
"I couldn't taste it." Lin Jianyu's palate wasn't as discerning as his. One thing was that she couldn't tell if the dried fish had changed, and another was that she had forgotten what the dried fish tasted like when she first took it out of the box. "Give me another one from the box so I can compare."
Lin Jinshui looked at the few dried fish left in the box, hesitated for a moment, but still took one for her to eat, and then took one for himself to eat as well.
"Why does Master eat too?" Lin Jianyu asked casually.
"For the sake of fairness," Lin Jinshui replied.
Lin Jianyu understood; it meant that if she ate two, he should also eat two.
"Is there a difference between the two?" Lin Jinshui asked.
"If I say I didn't taste it, will Master give me another one?" Lin Jianyu asked rhetorically.
"No way, don't even think about it." Lin Jinshui hugged the box of dried fish tightly, looking like there was no room for negotiation.
Once he was sure there was no next one, Lin Jianyu carefully recalled the differences between the two dried fish he had eaten.
The difference is actually minimal; both taste equally good. If you really have to compare them...
"The one at the back is crispier."
Great, another failure.
After this failure, Lin Jinshui stopped drawing talismans because he had very little yellow paper left and couldn't afford to make more.
"How about we try putting the bottle in the box of dried fish?" Lin Jianyu suggested.
Lin Jinshui glanced at the small porcelain bottle in his hand, then at the box containing the dried fish, and said, "Let's wait until we finish the dried fish before trying it!" There aren't many left anyway.
“You’re disgusted by your own blood,” Lin Jianyu said.
"Really?" Lin Jinshui feigned ignorance.
“It’s obvious,” Lin Jianyu said, exposing the truth.
Lin Jinshui: "..."
In the end, Lin Jinshui did not put the small porcelain bottle in the box containing dried fish.
The problem of blood preservation was naturally not solved.
This means he can't leave Lin Jianyu to find food, and it also means Lin Jianyu will have to go hungry every day from now on.
It's alright now; we can find wild fruits to eat along the way from time to time. But when winter comes, there won't be any wild fruits left. Then it won't just be a matter of going hungry; we could starve to death at any moment. We'll have to leave the mountains and forests to go to nearby towns to stock up on some food and winter clothes.
The temperature in the mountains was already quite low, and after a rain a couple of days ago, it dropped even further. He had enough clothes and wasn't afraid of the cold, but Lin Jianyu only had a tattered set of clothes. For the past two nights and mornings, she had been wrapped in his clothes to keep warm.
The master and apprentice were lucky that day, as they encountered a chestnut tree on their way.
After the White Dew solar term, most of the chestnuts have ripened and fallen to the ground.
Lin Jinshui and Lin Jianyu spent nearly an hour picking up most of the chestnuts on the ground before they could continue on their way.
This time, the master and apprentice did not venture deeper into the mountains and forests, but instead headed towards a nearby town.
After walking for four days, just as Lin Jianyu was about to finish off all the chestnuts in the chest, they finally left the forest.
A short walk from the edge of the woods leads to a village.
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