Conveying Spirit Through Words

Seven days passed in the blink of an eye. After Grandma Sun was laid to rest, Jin Wan and his family of four locked the door of their old courtyard with a heavy iron lock, packed their belongings, and prepared to leave Lexiang County.

Jin Hong sat at the front of a donkey cart, driving it forward. Lian Shuang sat at the back with their son, Jin Xingwang. Only Jin Wan pushed the cart holding the tools for making mutton soup, slowly following behind.

"Father, why don't you ride on the cart? I'll push it instead," Jin Hong turned to glance at his father, who was walking slowly, and couldn't help but suggest.

Jin Wan, looking utterly exhausted, shook his head. "No need. I'll push it myself."

Knowing his father's temperament, Jin Hong didn't insist further, though he intentionally slowed the donkey cart's pace so his father could keep up.

There were many roads leading out of the county, and the Jin family would not normally take the one passing by Ansi Courtyard.

But this time, when choosing their route, Jin Wan had his son take the road that led past Ansi Courtyard.

"Father, is that where Mr. Gu lives—the Ansi Courtyard?"

Stopping the donkey cart, Jin Hong, who was aware of some matters, asked.

Jin Wan glanced at him and craned his neck, looking in the direction of Ansi Courtyard. "Yes. I don't know if Mr. Gu is home."

"If you want to say goodbye to Mr. Gu, why not knock on his door directly?"

"There's still time, anyway. If you're embarrassed, I'll go instead."

"It's a chance to thank him properly too. After all, if he hadn't delivered the letter and used his immortal arts to bring us back, we wouldn't have made it in time for Grandma's burial..."

As Jin Hong spoke, he jumped down from the donkey cart. Before he could take a step, Jin Wan shouted loudly, "Don't go! Mr. Gu doesn't want to see the likes of us."

Hearing this, Jin Hong paused and said, "But… if Mr. Gu really disliked us, why would he go out of his way to bring Lian Shuang and me back home?"

"You fool, that was for your grandmother's sake!" Jin Wan sighed helplessly.

"Well… fine then. There'll be another chance to thank him in the future," Jin Hong said as he climbed back onto the donkey cart. With a flick of the short whip, he urged the donkey forward again. "Let's hurry up and get going. It'll take three to five days to travel back, and the sooner we arrive, the less we'll suffer."

Behind them, Jin Wan waved a hand, signaling for them to go ahead. Once the cart started moving, he turned to face Ansi Courtyard and bowed deeply.

"Mr. Gu, I'm leaving now. I'm taking this cart for making mutton soup with me. I intend to carry on my mother's trade and sell mutton soup elsewhere.

"I won't dabble in shady dealings anymore.

"But rest assured, I won't use the Sun's mutton soup name, lest I tarnish the signboard my mother spent her life building..."

"Still, if one day I have the courage to return to Lexiang County, I hope you'll come taste my mutton soup... See if my skills by then are worthy of bearing the Sun's mutton soup name."

With that, Jin Wan gripped the handles of the cart tightly, exerted all his strength, and hurried to catch up with the donkey cart ahead.

Inside Ansi Courtyard, Gu Ning'an gazed at the new strand of Worldly Qi in his palm and said softly, "If that day comes, I will come and taste it."

...

Pa!

Gu Ning'an set down his brush and gently waved the sheet of rice(Xuan) paper in front of him. The damp ink on the paper immediately dried clean.

On the rice paper lay a text written by Gu Ning'an, distilled from the essence of the cultivation manual sent by City God Xu. After simplifying the content and integrating his own insights, he composed it into a new manual.

He titled it The Lesser Yang Resonance Chapter, specifically prepared for Red-Tailed Fish and Hu Shi.

This manual was not an offensive technique but served primarily to help Red-Tailed Fish and Hu Shi sense the Lesser Yang Force in the natural world.

The former, being a river spirit of yin nature, could use this manual to refine its intermuscular bones and make further progress. The latter, born with an excess of yin energy and repressed yang, could balance the yin and yang forces in his body by simply reading it for several hours daily, ultimately resolving certain physical flaws.

Thud, thud, thud!

At precisely the hour of Shen (3 PM), a knock on the door rang out.

Sitting at the stone table, Gu Ning'an said calmly, "Come in. It's not locked."

With the creak of old hinges, Hu Shi slipped in sideways through a small gap, shut the door, and quickly approached Gu Ning'an. "Good day, Mr. Gu," he greeted respectfully.

Seeing Hu Shi's sneaky demeanor, Gu Ning'an chuckled. "What's the matter? Someone chasing you?"

"Heh heh..." Hu Shi gave an awkward laugh and replied, "Grandpa doesn't believe that you asked me to come. He thinks I'm sneaking out to play... I ran here while he wasn't paying attention."

"Why not just bring him along?" Gu Ning'an asked with a helpless smile.

Stunned, Hu Shi scratched his head. "Ah... that makes sense. I'll go back and fetch him."

"Enough, enough—you'll just make more trouble," Gu Ning'an waved a hand dismissively and handed him The Lesser Yin Resonance Chapter from the table. "Here. When you go play with Red-Tailed Fish, read this to it. Nineteen recitations a day will suffice." [The raw says Yin. This is probably a misktake.]

Taking the rice paper, Hu Shi didn't even glance at its contents before blurting out, "I… I can't read…"

Gu Ning'an smiled and pointed to the text. "How do you know you can't read it if you haven't looked?"

At this, Hu Shi hurriedly lowered his head to examine the paper. To his surprise, although he didn't recognize the characters, he inexplicably understood their meaning in his mind.

This miraculous phenomenon made Hu Shi's eyes widen with disbelief.

"'The Primordial Three Elements formed at the dawn of creation; turbid qi rises, and clear qi descends…'" Without realizing it, Hu Shi began reading the text aloud, his voice clear and fluent, without a single pause. It was as if his usual slow reactions had completely vanished.

However, this wasn't due to any mystical power within the manual itself—no manual, no matter how profound, could grant someone comprehension and fluency at first glance.

The real reason Hu Shi, despite being illiterate, could read and understand the text was because Gu Ning'an had infused his divine intent into the rice paper. This Conveying Spirit Through Words technique was extraordinarily taxing on both Gu Ning'an's mind and spiritual power. It was why he had spent so much time preparing, drafting the content mentally before writing it all out in one go.

"Mr. Gu... I can read now!" Hu Shi exclaimed excitedly after finishing the first recitation. "I'm going to read this to Red-Tailed Fish!"

Gu Ning'an nodded. "Go ahead."

"Okay!" Hu Shi nodded vigorously, paused for a moment to say, "See you later, Mr. Gu," and then dashed out of Ansi Courtyard with quick, thudding footsteps.