(Extra Story) Senior Martial Uncle 02

Everyone was staring wide-eyed, waiting.

“Quick, pour the talisman water from this gourd down the young lady’s throat!” Wang Qianyue was forced to speak up.

The steward hesitated for a moment, then finally looked toward the master standing not far off. Seeing the squire nod, he had someone take the gourd.

Wang Qianyue just stood there, looking as confident as if this exorcism were already a done deal.

Sure enough, not long after, the sound of retching came from inside, along with the delighted shouts of a servant: “The young lady’s awake! The young lady’s awake!”

Little Mouse crouched by the doorway and peeked in. He saw the young lady weakly leaning over the edge of the bed, with a large pool of disgusting black liquid on the floor in front of her.

“For the next seven days, decoct one dose of this medicine every day and drink it along with a talisman. After seven days, she’ll surely improve!” said Wang Qianyue, and by now the steward had completely believed in him, hurrying forward to take it.

“Reverend, how much for the medicine...”

Wang Qianyue raised a hand with a frown: “The medicine is a gift from this poor priest. The talisman is worth more than the medicine.”

Little Mouse had no idea how the negotiation went, only that he tagged along with Wang Qianyue for a good meal, and that Wang Qianyue pocketed a fair amount of silver.

But despite the squire’s family being warm and insistent, Wang Qianyue said he had important matters to attend to and left overnight with Little Mouse.

“What a load of nonsense about evil spirits — it was just indigestion from overeating!” Wang Qianyue finally said only after they had left Banbu village.

Little Mouse stared at him blankly.

Wang Qianyue felt a bit smug. “Didn’t see that coming, did you? I could tell at a glance — that daughter of theirs was nearly twice as stout as me. How could someone like that be possessed? One touch of the pulse and I knew it was just food stagnation. I don’t know what they were thinking, insisting on calling in monks and Taoists. Tsk.”

He said earnestly to Little Mouse: “The reason I didn’t do the exorcism until the next day is that I needed a whole day to gather herbs, understand?”

Little Mouse asked: “Then, is that medicine really that powerful?”

“Of course it is. It’s just a pot of foul-smelling, bitter herbs boiled together. Anyone who drinks it will throw up, and once she threw up, she felt better, didn’t she? Also, I added a bit of croton oil to the mix. That girl’s going to be living in the outhouse for the next few days. We’d better get moving fast — if they figure it out, we’re done for.”

He turned and caught the look of disgust on Little Mouse’s face and felt a little awkward.

“What’s with that look? I was curing the sick and saving lives. You think Taoists only know how to catch ghosts and drive out demons?”

Little Mouse rolled his eyes.

But Wang Qianyue had already moved on to another thought: “Say, kid, since you don’t have a family anyway, how about you come with me?”

Little Mouse pondered this.

“Look, this time I made thirty taels of silver. Originally I’d have given you three. If you come with me, I have to feed you and house you, right? So consider that three taels your food money, deal?” Wang Qianyue revealed his true motive.

Little Mouse had no objection to that, though.

Soon, Wang Qianyue discovered that this kid was very methodical in everything he did — even combing the donkey’s fur was done with great care — and quick to understand, remembering anything Wang Qianyue said only once.

“Too bad I can’t take on disciples, or I’d definitely take you as one. You know, our lineage was a renowned one back in the day. Damn shame it’s fallen into decline. And I was a fool — I joined even after it had already declined, and now it’s just me left in this branch.”

“Did you know about that great upheaval back then? Hmph. Ordinary folk never even saw it. All kinds of monsters, ghosts, Taoists, Buddhists — they all fought each other into a mess. In the end, nobody got anything good out of it. I don’t know what they were even after.”

Wang Qianyue was talkative, always spinning tall tales, but he sure could convince people. The great upheaval he himself had never even taken part in sounded, coming from his mouth, as if he’d been right there in the middle of it.

Little Mouse listened attentively to all of it, especially carefully memorizing the names of those great masters that Wang Qianyue mentioned.

Wang Qianyue treated Little Mouse well enough — aside from being stingy with money, he was generous in every other way.

He even taught Little Mouse how to mix potion proportions, when “ghost shadows” or bloodstains would appear, and when Little Mouse questioned him, Wang Qianyue said shamelessly: “We cultivators have to know a bit of everything, right? Just catching ghosts isn’t enough — you need to understand the principles!”

The two of them wandered without a fixed home, scraping by thanks to Wang Qianyue’s shamelessness and taking on a few more jobs along the way.

There were no evil spirits. There was only superstition. But Wang Qianyue wasn’t picky — as long as it paid, he’d take funerals, and he’d take pregnant women having difficult labor.

However, Wang Qianyue did feel that ever since he’d taken in Little Mouse, his luck had improved.

A woman with a difficult birth ended up delivering mother and child safe and sound under his half-baked rituals, and Wang Qianyue was so praised that day he even blushed a little.

One night, Wang Qianyue pulled a booklet from his bosom and tossed it to Little Mouse. “Can you read? If not, just look at the pictures. Doesn’t matter much anyway — I can’t make sense of it either.”

Little Mouse took the booklet and examined it carefully, a strange look in his eyes.

Seeing his expression, Wang Qianyue joked: “This is something special. Before the great upheaval, every cultivator carried one. But later they were all destroyed — they said it was a forbidden book by the imperial court. Your master here had a hard time finding this one.”

Wang Qianyue, though he went by the title of Taoist and knew some hard martial arts, actually didn’t have much real ability.

But with Little Mouse helping, his days were somewhat better than before.

After all, sometimes driving out ghosts and curing ailments required cooperation.

Things like spraying a mouthful of wine and then “slashing a ghost” — after a few lessons, Little Mouse was even slicker at it than he was.

He also discovered that Little Mouse had a special skill: he could tell whether it would rain based on the clouds.

After Little Mouse had been right a few times, Wang Qianyue summoned the nerve to tear down the official notice offering a reward for rainmaking.

Why? Because that hundred taels of silver made his mouth water too much.

Little Mouse had said there would be rain within three days. Wang Qianyue was curious how the kid knew, but Little Mouse just said that back home when he worked in the fields, he only had to look up at the sky to guess.

Maybe it was a gift.

Gift or not, as long as it put food on the table, that was good enough.

And sure enough, three days later, Wang Qianyue put on a show, chanting and humming all sorts of nonsense. The sky, which had only a few clouds, suddenly blew up a gust of wind, and then the rain came pouring down in buckets, accompanied by thunder.

At that moment, Wang Qianyue was immensely grateful that he had once given Little Mouse half a baked potato.

But Little Mouse just stood there quietly, as if all of it was only to be expected.

With money in hand, Wang Qianyue couldn’t wait to drag Little Mouse into a tavern, where they stuffed their faces ravenously. Between mouthfuls, he said to Little Mouse: “Remember this — when you’ve got money, spend it. Spend it like crazy. People like us just can’t hold on to savings.”

Then he laughed self-deprecatingly: “Who knows who made that rule, but folks who cultivate always seem to have some flaw. Me, for instance — money just slips through my fingers, hahaha. Don’t you go copying that.”

Little Mouse nodded.