The Little Fox's Immortal Cultivation Encyclopedia

Chapter 137 Using the False to Refine the True

Ah Sheng felt a piercing pain in the back of his head, his eyes felt heavy, and he couldn't lift them for a long time. His mind was hazy, when a voice suddenly entered his ears: "He's awake."

Ah Sheng gasped for breath and finally opened his eyes. The room was still the same room, but the red fish in the pot no longer floated to the surface, and the fox demon lying on the bed was gone. In its place was a handsome young man who was looking at him with a smile.

"Young Master Qing, you weren't eaten—" Ah Sheng sat on the stool, rubbing his head and looking around. "Where's that fox demon?"

The fox glanced at him sideways: "What fox?"

"It's just a short-snouted red fox," Ah Sheng said, meeting the fox's gaze, as the young master covered his face with his sleeve.

"But it looks like this?" The fox lowered its sleeves, its voice becoming high-pitched.

Ah Sheng stared blankly at the handsome young master before him, whose face was covered in red down and whose mouth and nose protruded forward—

Hu Nianshuang suddenly stood up, blocking Ah Sheng's view to prevent the poor man from fainting again: "Brother, stop fooling around."

.

She turned to Ah Sheng and said, "Don't be afraid, that's just how my brother is."

"Huh?" Ah Sheng shrank his neck, only to feel a blur before his eyes, and then the scene returned to normal, as if it were all a hallucination.

The fox put away its playful mood and kindly explained to Ah Sheng, "I am the fox from before, only I have transformed into human form."

"what!"

Ah Sheng shrank back, almost falling off the stool.

"Aren't you usually pretty brave? Why are you so easily startled?" The fox sneered. "To make up for scaring you out earlier, I have some news for you."

"Your master isn't a living person either; he's a ghost."

Ah Sheng stopped moving, his face full of skepticism: "I don't believe a monster like you!"

Before he could finish speaking, he saw a thin old man come in from outside the door. The old man first looked around with a stern face, and then walked towards him.

"Master, he says you're a ghost!"

The old man was silent for a few moments: "I am indeed a ghost."

"Ah!"

Ah Sheng stared at his master in disbelief. He had been in the den of ghosts for five years without even realizing it.

"Huh? I've lived here for five years and nothing's happened?" Ah Sheng recalled his master's actions. Although he had a bad temper and beat people hard, he had never harmed him.

What's there to be afraid of?

As long as it didn't involve horrifying techniques like spitting out human heads or swapping heads in front of people, Ah Sheng accepted it quickly and was relieved in no time.

"See? I told you this man is easygoing and won't be scared."

Most people keep their distance from Guan Village. Hu Nianshuang was startled by the nursery rhyme and the scene in the village, but Ah Sheng was carefree and only thought about going home to farm and get married.

"Of course, as long as it's alive, it's considered very kind-hearted compared to a certain fox."

The fox slapped the pot with its paw, making it spin endlessly like a top.

Hu Nianshuang rolled her eyes at the fox, looked at the old man, and said, "Old man, is what we guessed true?"

The old man sighed deeply: "Now that things have come to this, I have nothing left to hide."

"Ah Sheng, there are some things I should tell you."

He paused for a few breaths, then recounted the details of the burial in exactly the same way he had described before.

"However, the first time I woke up, it wasn't in a coffin, but underwater."

The fox stopped what it was doing and listened attentively to the story.

"When I opened my eyes, I saw many people in armor surrounding me and looking at me," the old man recalled. "I was at a loss, but then I heard them speak."

"They said there was a war going on here, it was too dangerous, and told me to leave quickly. They also asked me what I did for a living."

This is quite different from what the fox saw. However, Guan Village has a history of several decades, and this old man died even earlier, so perhaps his lingering spirit was better preserved back then.

"I said I'm an antique craftsman."

"They didn't know what 'aging' meant, so I explained it to them. It just so happened that I was holding a jade hairpin in my hand when I was buried. It was my most prized piece, so I showed it to them."

"They passed it around and looked at it. As it was passed around, a soldier suddenly looked at it over and over for a while and said, 'This is not fake, it is real.'"

"I told him it was a copy, how could I not know? But he wouldn't listen, he just kept talking to himself."

He said his wife also had a hairpin like that. When she went to war, she put the hairpin in his hand and said that if he missed home, he should take a look at it, because it was exactly the same as mine.

The old man sighed again: "I saw with my own eyes that the jade hairpin changed and became a bamboo hairpin."

"He even gestured to me, saying it must be real, that the bamboo hairpin had broken once, and even the crack on it matched up. He said he would personally put it on his wife when he got back."

Hu Nianshuang unconsciously stroked the silver hairpin in her hair, her eyes wandering.

The old man didn't continue, skipping over this part: "Anyway, they didn't make things difficult for me, and they even saw me off."

"This matter should have ended here, but I can't let it go."

"Ah Sheng, do you know that feeling? I've spent my whole life making counterfeit goods, using a bunch of scrap metal to fool rich people, but suddenly one day, the fake becomes real."

"My counterfeit goods have been seen and recognized by these people who are sunk in the river, unrecorded, unknown, and unseen."

The fox understood. At this moment, perhaps influenced by the soldiers' unwillingness and reluctance to let go, or perhaps truly resonating with them, the old man's counterfeit goods embodied their thoughts and became proof of their existence.

The fox sat up, its mind churning. It had seen many evil spirits before and always eliminated them without hesitation. But this time, as a fox who had witnessed the battle firsthand, it couldn't bring itself to use its claws.

The fox knew perfectly well that using antiques to entrust its thoughts and give its lingering resentment a place to go was far less effective than using the Six Qi Method to suppress and purify it. People's hearts change, thoughts fade, and even if the lingering resentment is gone, the fox has no idea how the Yin Sha will change.

But there are no foolproof things in this world. If you believe it, then do it.

Besides, which of these phenomena today isn't the result of a series of coincidences? I simply don't believe it—

"No!" The fox's thoughts raced around before it suddenly realized the problem.

Why think so much? Fox can do whatever he wants. If others have any objections, they can handle them themselves. Even if problems arise, Fox can always come back and bail him out!

The fox's mind cleared instantly, and he looked forward again, only to find Ah Sheng with red eyes, solemnly picking up his paintbrush, looking at the painting in front of him, his hand trembling so badly that he hesitated to put pen to paper.

"With your hands shaking like this, how can you even begin to write?" The old man gripped the pen. "I'll teach you one last time."

The fox froze, then moved closer to Hu Nianshuang: "What happened? What did that old man say that made Ah so angry that he wants to finish his drawing quickly and run away?"

Hu Nianshuang glanced at the fox speechlessly: "Brother, don't joke around. Asheng said he's not leaving; he wants to pass on this craft for his master."

Just as the fox was about to make a sarcastic remark, it suddenly heard a voice.