Chapter 88: Having a Few Little Tricks Up Your Sleeve When Traveling (Fifth Update)

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

At dawn, at Lu City Railway Station, a man in a suit 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 mystery cultivator, clearly wouldn't charter entire freight cars like wealthy merchants, his presence on board meant real safety and assurance.

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, right?

But Feng Xue clearly 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, right? I know that one! You're heading to the cargo unloading zone, yes? I'll take you there!"

"Oh?" Feng Xue was slightly surprised the manager knew—yet the manager smiled and explained:

"Ever since the railway was laid, we've often had cultivators ask for this. After all, the Pot Heaven pouch is so convenient—if it weren't so expensive, it'd steal all our freight car business! Funny thing is, with the New Year approaching, many folks in Port Capital are rushing to ship goods before the shutdown, 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.

But just then, Feng Xue suddenly said:

"By the way, I heard a train was robbed by bandits before?"

"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 dozens of cash! That locomotive's repair alone 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, exactly—the old masters say the boiler's fine, just the axle's broken. Replace it and it runs again. 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, wouldn't it take ten days or more with all the travel?"

Hearing this, Feng Xue feigned surprise:

"That must delay a lot of business, then?"

"Absolutely!" The manager nodded vigorously, then pointed to 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!"

Here, 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 and shook the manager's hand, then turned without hesitation toward the unloading gate. The manager awkwardly glanced at his hand, immediately 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-Blinded Mind】, derived from 【Demonic Prayer Charm】, was truly useful—even without summoning a spirit, just releasing a trace of ghostly energy could make ordinary people act exactly as he wished, without realizing it.

But for Feng Xue, the even more astonishing thing about this technique was that above the manager's head, a term now appeared—

【Ghost-Blinded Mind: Upon contact with ghostly energy, the target is influenced by the controller's will and acts according to their expectations.】

This term's appearance transformed what had been a shallow, easily broken trick—usable only on ordinary people and vulnerable to suspicion—into a superpower: once successfully applied, it became permanent, absolute control.

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

But even so, its functionality was undeniable. If Feng Xue were truly a great demon, he could touch and withdraw, bringing every ordinary person in the city under his sway—even if he could control only one at a time, he could still trigger massive disasters. This made Feng Xue realize how vital the world's karmic system truly was.

"Mr. Feng! You're here to collect votive power too!" Just as Feng Xue was musing, a slightly unfamiliar voice called from nearby. He looked up and saw a vaguely familiar face; after a moment, he recalled—this was one of Master Chen's disciples, something like…

"Mr. Feng, just call me Le Shui. We've met before!"

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

"Mr. Feng, you're just in time—check the schedule, the train's coming soon, peak votive power time. I do this often, I know the spot—this is the best place to collect!"

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 Loyalist."

Feng Xue wasn't from the Taiping Sect. He wrote this because it was well-known; if one had the nerve, "Great Strength Bodhisattva" would work too—neither Sun Wukong nor Niutou would covet such meager votive power. The tablet was merely a medium to guide and concentrate votive energy.

In fact, according to Li Maolin's method of nurturing phantom deities, this was the very first step: fix a name, gather sufficient votive power, and offer incense daily, and slowly a phantom deity would form.

But note: if the phantom deity you seek to cultivate already has some fame among the people and has already formed, you must not use its most famous title—only then will you create your own phantom deity, not merely become a fragment of an existing one.

Feng Xue, who'd always planned to flee, didn't expect to forge a phantom deity 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)