Chapter 82: Skill: Incense Making

Chen Shicheng had Hui Siye calculate the time; the evening a week later was the special time for incense making.

In other words, he must learn the incense-making skill within a week and gather various materials for backup.

Fortunately, he had Merit Points, so upgrading the skill was easy, and most materials were sold at the pharmacy; only the aged locust wood and those few kinds of water were hard to collect.

However, money can make ghosts turn millstones; although commissioning ordinary people to gather materials, only the lowest-grade Yinxiang Incense could be produced.

But if he succeeds once, he can directly use Merit Points to raise the skill to max level, then later gather spirit-endowed materials so that producing better Yinxiang Incense won't be wasteful.

"If I had Yinxiang Incense for teleportation, wouldn't I be rich!"

Chanting "Yinxiang Incense" all the way, Chen Shicheng spurred his horse back to the gathering place, rushed straight to the pharmacy, and packed up all purchasable materials.

He then found idle people at the gathering place and issued a task to find the remaining materials.

At first they complained that monsters gathered outside and refused to go on adventures, but as Chen Shicheng took out silver ingot after ingot, opposition dwindled, and finally they slapped their chests promising to bring back what he wanted even if they lost their lives out there.

Thus, lured by money, only a day passed, Chen Shicheng hadn't even finished reading the incense-making book, yet these people delivered all the unobtainable materials.

Some clever folks even specially brought in already air-dried locust wood, saving him the time to process it himself.

Seeing the materials laid out on the inn table, plus the mortars, earthen basins, hand mills and other incense-making tools bought that day, Chen Shicheng summoned his pre-college exam zeal and began frantically studying everything in the hand-copied manual.

Only when night fell did he put down the hand-copied manual, head pounding, and stand before the table ready to show his skill.

Of course, what he was making wasn't the special-time-required Yinxiang Incense but ordinary sandalwood incense; if he could steadily produce sandalwood incense, the incense-making skill would appear in his skill bar.

Then Merit Points would come in handy! "Why are you so fixated on Yinxiang Incense? By rights, shouldn't it be Reverence-God Incense?"

Hui Siye had inhaled a dozen or so Reverence-God Incense sticks that day; after gaining incense-fire power, his vitality finally recovered, and he grew curious about Chen Shicheng's actions.

According to its thinking, this kid Chen Shicheng eyes his little stockpile each day; Reverence-God Incense should be his priority hard currency. "You don't understand—Yinxiang Incense can be compared to a teleportation array; how could it not be important?" Chen Shicheng laid out his tools within reach, cracked his fists and rubbed his palms, preparing to make incense for the first time in his life.

"Soaring clouds, riding mist, summoning demonic winds—if worse comes to worst, one can still fly on a magic weapon; not to mention earth‑escaping techniques of the Five Elements—why choose the extremely dangerous Yinxiang?"

Hui Siye still couldn't grasp Chen Shicheng's mindset: "Is the netherworld really that easy to enter? The little protective power of Yinxiang Incense is practically nil; in the mysterious, deceitful netherworld it cannot guarantee safety—accidents could happen at any moment."

"After you go down, you'll likely die for no apparent reason before even seeing your surroundings."

"Stop!"

Chen Shicheng quickly cut off Hui Siye's long-winded lecture; he knew it was meant well, but Hui Siye simply didn't grasp how important instant‑movement methods are to players.

The phrase "moths to a flame" is perfectly suited to describe players.

Wherever there's profit, wherever there's liveliness, that's where you see players swarming forward, one after another, just to try to snag some advantage.

What's death, after all?

He is now level 8, also third layer of Qi Refining; his lifespan has already surpassed 120 years, reaching 132 years, so dying once or twice is nothing he can't accept.

In reality, people risk never surfacing again, diving head‑first into water‑filled wells to fetch a drill bit just for that meager hazardous‑pay wage; how much more so in a game where power syncs to reality.

Most importantly, the cost paid remains wholly within a reasonable and acceptable range.

Players don't care whether something is dangerous or not; they just want speed, they just want to be the first to taste the crab.

Thus, Yinxiang Incense, a dangerous teleportation item, has become an extremely important prop; on a national scale it is even a strategic resource.

Under these circumstances, how could one not value it so highly!

After signaling Hui Siye to stay quiet, Chen Shicheng took the mortar, pounded the chopped sandalwood into fine bits, then ground them into powder in the hand mill.

Next, he casually picked a spice, ground it into bits the same way and set it aside; "Now comes the crucial mixing."

Chen Shicheng took the ceramic bowl holding the sandalwood powder, grabbed a handful of spice and tossed it in, then began adding water and stirring; he wasn't sure exactly how much to add, but with plenty of material he could trial‑and‑error endlessly until he found the right ratio.

Under water's action, the spice and sandalwood powder gradually became a brown dough under his kneading—soft‑hard balanced, not sticky.

Thereafter he began the final step of incense making—rolling the incense.

Pinching off a small piece of the sandalwood‑powder dough, Chen Shicheng kept rubbing it on the tabletop; soon a limp sandalwood incense stick appeared before him.

Without waiting for natural air‑drying, Chen Shicheng channeled True Essence; the sandalwood instantly heated, exhaled a white mist, and in the blink of an eye finished soft‑to‑hard hardening.

Yet looking at the sandalwood incense in his hand, he faintly sensed something off; per the manual's description, the finished sandalwood should be evenly colored, tasty but not greasy, with a naturally uniform body.

But this sandalwood stick in his hand, although the force control of his supreme‑level sword technique let it present perfectly even and natural while rolling, its color and taste were hard to describe; sure enough, when lit, the flavor was mottled and impure, the burn speed uneven—sometimes fast, sometimes slow—even worse than a mosquito coil.

Chen Shicheng glumly pinched out the sandalwood incense.

Obviously, his first attempt at incense making ended in failure.

But he wasn't discouraged; he immediately perked up and began a second try.

The result? This time's aroma and appearance were even worse than the first.

"Continue!"

Third try. "Again!"

Fourth try. Thus, after making over fifty consecutive attempts, Chen Shicheng finally found a stable ratio, and a product virtually identical to the sandalwood incense sold at incense shops was born in his hand.

【You obtained sandalwood incense: the most ordinary incense, with no supernatural effect, normally used by common folk for ancestor worship, its flavor mild and pleasant, worthy of being called a fine product.】

Press the advantage!

While the success experience was still fresh, Chen Shicheng rolled out another hundred‑plus sandalwood incense sticks in one go, and the panel finally belatedly showed a new prompt: 【Congratulations on self‑teaching mastery, you have acquired the Incense‑Making Skill (Entry Level): using simple materials you can make ordinary incense; selling it at temple fairs could seemingly keep you clothed and fed.】

"Master Dao, I've made it!"

Chen Shicheng looked at the incense‑making skill appearing in his skill bar and, without hesitation, began pouring Merit Points into it.

【In the first year, relying on experience you began making other incense types—agarwood‑type, sandalwood‑type, cypress‑type, osmanthus‑type, blended types—nothing left out.】

【In the second year, you, who know all incense types like the back of your hand, started experimenting with miraculously effective incense, but countless trials all failed.】

【In the fifth year, you finally realized incense making isn't that simple; the addition of various adjuncts seems to have some mutual‑generation‑and‑inhibition relationship akin to alchemy.】

【In the eleventh year, you began steadily producing the incenses recorded in the hand‑copied book; through countless experiments you finally matched the proper ratios, and the incense‑making skill upgraded to Skilled.】

【In the seventeenth year, with Hui Siye's cooperation, you made countless adjustments to technique and material ratios, enabling you to produce at any time all the incenses listed in the hand‑copied book; the incense‑making skill upgraded to Expert.】

【In the twenty‑ninth year, you have mastered the incenses in the hand‑copied book; incense quality comes easily to you, and among the incense types recorded there you are already an incense‑making master!】

"Wuhu, take off!"

Chen Shicheng closed his eyes, his fingers incessantly flicking, mentally replaying various incense‑making techniques.

After his memories merged and became clear, he suddenly opened his eyes and began working on the table.

This time what he made was not ordinary sandalwood incense, but the Reverence‑God Incense that Master Hui Si needed most.

The required materials changed from ordinary sandalwood to a deity statue that had been long exposed to incense smoke, and the auxiliary ingredients shifted from common herbs to aged spiritual medicine.

However, under his perfected incense‑making skill, these materials he had never touched before were orderly turned into powder; after measuring, mixing, and rolling, a qualified stick of Reverence‑God Incense soon appeared on the tabletop.

Although he used the True Essence drying method during the drying stage, with his top‑tier technique the quality of this stick of Reverence‑God Incense still surpassed those he had bought from Chu Ma Xian Po Po, the Horse Immortal.

"Master Si, take two puffs and see how the quality is."

Chen Shicheng lit the Reverence‑God Incense, placed it before Master Hui Si, and kept urging him.

Seeing Chen Shicheng constantly giving him flirtatious glances, Master Hui Si was too exhausted to retort.

After experiencing the shock of being told that understanding a formation could be instantaneous in the underground cavity, he could no longer feel any surprise that Chen Shicheng had learned to make Reverence‑God Incense in less than half an hour.

"You can't really treat me like a lab rat, can you? I used to be a big shot in the Golden Core stage—show some respect!" Though he thought that, seeing the exceptionally high‑quality Reverence‑God Incense, Master Hui Si couldn't resist the temptation and took a deep breath.

"Oh~~~~ Nice stuff!"

As the white smoke from the Reverence‑God Incense drifted into its body, a rich and pure incense‑fire power instantly entered its primordial spirit, giving a warm, comforting feeling that left Master Hui Si blissfully intoxicated—all that was missing was a couch for it to lie on and enjoy.

"Cough cough."

Just as Master Hui Si was intoxicated by the incense‑fire power, Chen Shicheng gave two dry coughs, directly snuffed out the incense tip, rubbed his fingers before it, and said, "The trial sniff period is over; if you want to continue, you'll have to pay."

"You, little skinny calf, you're impressive!"

Hui Siye glared at Chen Shicheng, took out the Storage Bag, poured out all the Spiritual Medicine inside, "Here, all of it, for you!"

"This."

This time it was Chen Shicheng's turn, and he was somewhat surprised, not knowing what madness Hui Siye was uttering.

He tentatively put some Spiritual Medicine into the storage compartment, and seeing that Hui Siye, though in pain, did not stop him, he then packed all the items and threw them into the storage compartment.

"So you agree to my proposal?" Chen Shicheng pointed to his own mask and asked, a little puzzled.

"Take another look," Hui Siye said in a low voice, shaking his head.

Having seen the Horse Immortal lose its power because of its own reasons, it indeed developed a thought of merely surviving, not for itself but to allow those who worship it to have a good end.

However, now that Chen Shicheng has learned incense making, it means that future Reverence‑God Incense can be plentiful.

Seeing his enthusiasm for teleportation and transmission, my Five Ghosts Transport Technique should be able to trade for some incense, and for now I don't have to cut off my own fallback, becoming a puppet that follows orders.

Thinking of this, Hui Siye said, "Since you've learned incense making, you may use my Five Ghosts Transport Technique from now on, but you must guarantee to provide me with enough Reverence‑God Incense so that I have sufficient incense fire power for divine descent."

But when he thought of Chen Shicheng's "won't miss a rabbit, won't let a hawk go" personality, Hui Siye hesitated, then added, "If our cooperation goes smoothly, perhaps in the future I will truly agree to your proposal, replacing that foreign demon from beyond the realm."

"This pastry drawing is better than any of my former bosses!" Chen Shicheng gave Hui Siye a thumbs‑up and said, "I might as well go eat Ah San's pastry; at least theirs can fly."

"Ah San? What is that?"

Hui Siye spread his two little paws and said, "Since you've taken everything anyway, at least give me the Reverence‑God Incense first; after that, consider what I said yourself— the decision is yours."

Chen Shicheng always felt that Hui Siye was trying to get something for nothing, but he had no evidence.

However, the Spiritual Medicine had already been taken, and it couldn't be spit out again, so he could only, half‑in‑credulity, give all the Reverence‑God Incense in the box to Hui Siye.

He also used the remaining materials to make a couple dozen Reverence‑God Incense sticks, as chips for future coercion of Hui Siye to use the Five Ghosts Transport Technique.

After experiencing the process of making Reverence‑God Incense, he felt confident about producing Yinxiang Incense.

But it's not the right time yet, so Chen Shicheng could only put away the tools and materials, waiting for next week's dark moon, dark day, dark hour.

Ignoring Hui Siye, who was standing the Reverence‑God Incense sticks one by one, he turned his head and began checking the status of the La Tiao.

(End of chapter)