Day and night tour

Chapter 56 Paper Boatman
"I...you ask me? I don't know!"

Yuan Buyu shook his head like a rattle and answered very straightforwardly.

He sighed, "Xuan is too weird. I can't figure it out. I can't figure it out! I guess after this kid lights incense and practices, strange things will happen one after another. It will be a headache in the future."

It is really difficult to train an apprentice who is beyond the knowledge of the masters.

Yuan Buyu looked up at the sky. It was almost dusk, and he felt that it was getting late. He said to Zhou Xuan, "Xuanzi, take the folding fan and the wake-up stick back to your room. Take good care of your incense tonight and don't do anything improper. After dinner tomorrow morning, I will teach you the skills of a storyteller."

"Old Yuan, what are the skills of a storyteller? Can he make the storytelling more exciting?"

"Oh, the purpose of storytelling is to earn incense and Taoism. If we really want to talk about my ability, you will see."

Yuan Buyu slowly took out a folding fan and a wake-up stick from his pocket, and knocked the fan and the sticks against each other, making a "da" sound.

Zhou Xuan heard the sound and the surrounding environment changed. At this time, he was standing on a lonely and extremely high cliff. There were abysses in front, behind, and on both sides of him. There was no place to stretch his feet, so he could only stand there.

After standing there for half a minute, there was suddenly a loud thunder in the sky, and a flash of lightning passed by like a startled goose, with the tail of the lightning brushing past Zhou Xuan's nose.

"Da", the wake-up stick sounded again.

Suddenly, several strange hands emerged from the cliff and wrapped Zhou Xuan's body tightly. The coral-like fingers grabbed his eyes and ear holes.

"Da", the wake-up stick sounded three times.

The strange hand and the thunder were gone, Zhou Xuan only felt pain in his chest, he looked down and saw a folding fan appeared out of nowhere and hung in front of his chest, with the bamboo handle of the folding fan against his chest.

At this time, the wake-up stick sounded for the fourth time, the folding fan on Zhou Xuan's chest disappeared, and the cliff rocks under his feet disappeared. He stood in front of the Zhou family's ancestral tree again. Everything that had just happened seemed like a dream.

Yuan Buyu seemed not to have moved. He just held a folding fan in his right hand and a wake-up stick in his left hand, smiling brightly.

"How about it, Xuanzi?" Yuan Buyu said with a little pride.

"Old Yuan, you are really good at Taoism." Zhou Xuan praised sincerely, even a little fascinated.

Thunder, strange hands, folding fan, if Yuan Buyu had not held back, he would have died three times...

"It's not a great skill, but just a small skill of the storyteller - dreaming in plain land, catching thieves with a rattling log! I will teach you tomorrow..."

Yuan Buyu walked towards the kitchen with a triumphant step, secretly rejoicing in his heart: After an entire afternoon, I finally managed to put on a show in front of Xuan Zi! Being a master is hard, and being a genius master is even harder. If you don't show your true skills, it's hard to control the situation.

As soon as Yuan Buyu left, Zhou Lingyi also told Zhou Xuan: "Brother, listen to Elder Yuan, take good care of your incense at night, and don't go anywhere."

"Yes, I know. The kidnapper is still watching me. It's dangerous to go out and play in the dark."

"Kidnapper? I was just about to remind you."

Zhou Lingyi said solemnly: "In the next few days, as long as you have time, you can go wherever you want. Don't be afraid of kidnappers looking for you. I'm just afraid that they won't look for you..."

Zhou Xuan gave Zhou Lingyi a thumbs up, sister is so domineering!
……

The Zhou family's yard is more lively at night than during the day.

Zhou Xuan didn't go to the yard to chat, but stayed in the house. He couldn't sleep anyway. He just felt his eyes starting to hurt again, but the degree was not as severe as the previous two days.

He asked Yuan Buyu, and Old Yuan said that this was the side effect of the blood well's spiritual connection that was increasing.

"It will still hurt for a while, but as your practice improves, it will slowly disappear. Everyone's progress is different. For some, the pain will disappear when the incense stick is halfway burned, while for others, they have to wait until the incense stick is burned out and light the second incense stick in the Divine Revelation Secret Realm before the pain disappears..."

In order to relieve the pain, Zhou Xuan asked an apprentice from the opera troupe to bring half a bucket of ice and wrapped it in a quilt for fear that the ice would melt quickly.

The pain was unbearable, so he wrapped some ice in gauze, made an ice pack, and rubbed it on his eyes.

The pain was relieved a lot, but he was unable to move, so he had nothing to do. He took out the original owner's diary and continued to read it.

The last time I watched it, I already understood that the original owner was a dandy young man, whose life was all about eating, drinking, having fun, beating people, going to the theater, and watching actors.

The diary was basically all about love affairs, just like reading a pornographic book. This time, when I flipped further, I even found a section about his love life with a movie star.

Compared with the pure romance before, this love affair was surprisingly much more fresh and clean.

The actress loved reading, so the original owner wrote love letters to her in order to pursue her. However, due to his poor literary talent, he copied some articles from newspapers and magazines.

He was particularly attentive in dating celebrities. He would cut the articles he wanted to copy from newspapers, cut them into small pieces, and glue them onto a manuscript book with glue.

According to the diary, Zhou Xuan found the handwritten copy on the bookshelf in the house and read the tofu block.

Although the original owner's character is not good, his aesthetic sense is indeed online. The articles he picked out are of high quality. It's nice to read them to kill time.

The topics of these tofu blocks are varied, including gossip, prose, poetry, and even a few horror stories.

"Wouldn't writing love letters scare girls?" There was a horror story in it that left a deep impression on Zhou Xuan. It was very short, but terrifying when you think about it carefully.

"In the afternoon, the old dog that I had raised at home for fifteen years started to bite me crazily... I was so scared that I picked up an axe and chopped the old dog more than a dozen times. Then I fainted.

The next day, I attended my mother's funeral. Her body had been chopped into pieces by someone unknown."

"It's a bit creepy..." Zhou Xuan turned the page, read a few more essays, adjusted his mood, turned off the lights and went to sleep.

As soon as he closed his eyes, he could hear the sound of the wind blowing and the sound of the bow hitting the water.

Zhou Xuan sat in the white-sailed boat again - his divine secret realm.

The furnishings in the cabin remain the same as before.

There is a low table, an incense burner, incense sticks, and a wooden sword on the corner of the table.

This time, Zhou Xuan didn't stare at the incense anymore. He turned to look at the cabin door.

There was a row of red bead curtains hanging on the cabin door. Through the curtains, one could see a helmsman at the bow.

He was rowing the boat with a pale oar in his hand.

Looking closely, the oar was neither bamboo nor wood, but was made of pieces of human leg bones.

The boatman also looked strange, with a sickly pale face and a spot of blush on both sides of his cheeks.

His skin seemed to be covered with a layer of oil, and when illuminated by the candlelight in the cabin, it reflected a wax-like luster.

After careful analysis for a while, Zhou Xuan discovered that
This boatman,
It is a paper figure made of white wax paper.

The paper man seemed to notice someone was watching him from behind. He turned around suddenly, looked at Zhou Xuan, and grinned.

The smile was so creepy that Zhou Xuan felt a little uneasy. He woke up suddenly as if he had a nightmare and sat up straight.

"Didn't Old Yuan say that the spring scenery in the Shenqi Secret Realm is beautiful? The paper man holding up the leg bones is a little too bright, isn't it?"

Zhou Xuan prepared himself mentally, closed his eyes again, and entered the secret realm again. The boatman was still there, but this time he did not look back and just rowed the boat on his own.

The boat was sailing on the endless dark water. Zhou Xuan wanted to go over and take another look at Shao Gong. After all, it was his own divine secret realm, so he was not afraid of any weirdness from the other party.

But perhaps the secret realm was just opened today, and I didn't have enough understanding of it, so I couldn't act. So I simply gave up and had to stay where I was and watch the boat go by.

It was unknown how long had passed, when suddenly a white light flashed and Zhou Xuan woke up again. It was already daybreak.

……

After Zhou Xuan got dressed and washed up, he went to the cafeteria. Yuan Buyu was sitting in the corner reading the newspaper quietly, and Old Ma, who was burning the boiler, was listening nearby.

"Old Yuan." Zhou Xuan leaned over to Yuan Buyu's ear and said, "My secret realm is not right."

"What's wrong?" Yuan Buyu took Zhou Xuan to an empty corner.

When they arrived at the place, Zhou Xuan told the story of the paper man rowing the boat. Yuan Buyu frowned as he listened.

"Are you sure you didn't see it wrong?"

"Look carefully."

"What on earth did you go through? It's so weird. How could there be such a sneaky thing in the dream of divine revelation?"

Yuan Buyu thought about it for a long time but still couldn't figure it out.

"Old Yuan, is that paper boatman a good or bad person?"

Yuan Buyu stared at Zhou Xuan for a few seconds before speaking with a bitter face: "You have touched my blind spot of knowledge again."

“……”Zhou Xuan.

Master, where did you promise to answer my questions?
“Anyway, it’s not a bad thing. What’s there to be afraid of in your own secret realm? Besides, since the boat in your secret realm has already started to move, it means that your heart fragrance has begun to look for the opportunity of the second incense stick in the secret realm.

Today we will talk about how storytellers can accumulate Taoism and improve their skills, so that you can light the second incense stick as soon as possible.
After lighting it, perhaps the reason why your secret realm is so strange will surface on its own."

Zhou Xuan reached out and took a steamed bun, took a bite, and said, "What if it can't float out?"

"Then go light the third stick of incense."

“……”Zhou Xuan.

(End of this chapter)