Chapter 113: Having a Few Tricks Up Your Sleeve When Traveling (Fifth Chapter)

“Mr. Feng, good morning! Where are you headed?”

At dawn, Lu City Railway Station, a well-dressed manager stood before Feng Xue, bowing respectfully.

There was no help for it—these days, anyone who rode the train was hardly an ordinary person, and certainly not like in the future, where a few junior clerks or ticket ladies could handle things; here, a manager was always on standby.

Although Feng Xue, as a mysterious cultivator, clearly wouldn’t charter entire freight cars like wealthy merchants, his presence on board guaranteed real safety.

That lightning strike the night before? Many people saw it! Just him choosing which train to take could boost ticket sales by twenty percent over normal!

But Feng Xue wasn’t here to buy a ticket; he could only reply in a calm tone:

“I’m here to study a technique, so I came to take a look around.”

“Oh, the Pot Heaven technique, right? I know that one! You’re heading for the cargo unloading zone—I’ll take you there!”

“Oh?” Feng Xue was slightly surprised the manager knew; the manager smiled and explained:

“Since the railway was laid, we’ve often had cultivators ask for this. After all, the Pot Heaven pouches are so convenient—if they weren’t so expensive, they’d steal all our freight car business! Funny thing is, with the New Year coming up, many folks in Port City are rushing to ship goods before operations halt, so it’s peak season now.”

“I see.” Feng Xue recalled Ninth Aunt’s business renting out Pot Heaven pouches and understood; he chatted casually with the manager as they walked toward the cargo handling area.

Just then, Feng Xue suddenly said:

“By the way, I heard a train was robbed by bandits recently?”

“You mean the one half a month ago?” The manager responded instantly, a flash of anger crossing his face:

“Those damn bandits are fools! They blew up an eight-thousand-cash locomotive over a few dozen cash worth of cargo! If they’d just said there were explosives on the route, we’d have handed them a few dozen cash easily! Just repairing that locomotive will cost hundreds of cash!”

“Oh? Is it that hard to fix?” Feng Xue’s eyes narrowed slightly, his tone curious.

“Not hard to fix, really—the boiler’s fine, according to the old masters. Just the axle’s broken; replace it and it’s good to go. But that locomotive weighs tens of thousands of jin! Can you use a regular axle? It was imported from Victoria; parts must be ordered from there too. Even if we sent someone right now, the journey alone would take ten days or more, especially with the New Year holidays!”

Hearing this, Feng Xue feigned surprise:

“That must hurt business badly, then?”

“Absolutely!” The manager nodded vigorously, then pointed toward a shed beside a railway siding:

“Look, it’s parked right there! We only have a few locomotives on this line—losing one means losing so much cargo! Damn bandits!”

As he spoke, the manager suddenly realized who he was complaining to; he shuddered, then forced a nervous smile:

“Sorry, Mr. Feng, the unloading area’s right here. I won’t disturb you further…”

“No problem, no problem.” Feng Xue smiled, shook the manager’s hand, then turned without hesitation toward the unloading gate. The manager awkwardly glanced at his hand, then shoved it into his pocket, not even caring that he’d wrinkled his prized suit.

As the manager walked away, Feng Xue smiled. This technique, Ghost Mind Confusion, derived from the Nightmare Prayer, was truly useful—even without summoning a spirit, just a trace of ghostly energy could make ordinary people act exactly as he wished, without realizing it.

But for Feng Xue, the real brilliance of this technique was this—above the manager’s head, a term now appeared:

【Ghost Mind Confusion: Those exposed to ghostly energy are influenced by the controller’s will, acting according to the controller’s desires.】

This term’s appearance transformed a minor trick—once effective only for shallow suggestion and easily broken by suspicion—into a superpower: once successfully applied, it could instantly become absolute control.

Yet its coercive power remained weak; even ordinary people with strong wills or heavy yang energy could resist it, let alone cultivators.

Even so, its utility was undeniable. If Feng Xue were truly a great demon, he could touch one person after another, sweeping the entire city’s populace under his control—even if he could only manipulate one at a time, the chaos he could cause would be immense. This made Feng Xue realize how vital the world’s karmic system truly was.

“Mr. Feng! You’re here to collect votive energy too!” Just as Feng Xue was musing, a slightly unfamiliar voice called from nearby. He looked up and recognized a familiar face; after a moment, he recalled—this was one of Master Chen’s disciples, named…

“Call me Le Shui, Mr. Feng—we’ve met before!”

“I remember—you were the one who opened the altar and guided votive energy when the corpse puppets attacked me!” Feng Xue nodded, smiling. Le Shui beamed, delighted that Feng Xue remembered:

“Perfect timing, Mr. Feng! According to the schedule, the train’s arriving soon—that’s when votive energy is strongest. I do this often; I know this spot best for collecting it!”

Led enthusiastically by Le Shui to a spot near the unloading gate, Feng Xue saw the altar already set up. He knew Le Shui wasn’t bluffing; he followed suit, pulling from his Pot Heaven pouch a table, incense burner, candles, and finally a simple wooden tablet inscribed with four large characters: “Yellow Turban Warrior.”

Feng Xue wasn’t from the Yellow Turban Sect—he chose this name simply because it was well-known. In truth, if one had the nerve, one could write “Great King Bodhisattva” instead; neither Sun Wukong nor Niutouwang would covet such meager votive energy. The tablet was merely a medium to guide and concentrate votive energy.

In fact, according to Li Maolin’s method of nurturing the phantom spirit, this was the first step: fix a name, gather sufficient votive energy, and offer daily incense and worship to slowly cultivate a phantom spirit.

But note: if the spirit you wish to cultivate already has a known identity in the folk, and a phantom spirit already exists under that name, you must not use the most famous title—only then will the spirit you cultivate be your own, not merely a fragment of an existing one.

Feng Xue, who’d planned to flee anyway, knew he couldn’t create a phantom spirit in two or three days. He simply followed ritual: lit incense, candles, oil lamps, burned a few paper ingots, then waited for the train’s arrival and the laborers’ exertions…

(End of Chapter)