novelraw Chapter 542: The Qi of the Ticket Wind, The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl
Chapter 542: The Qi of the Ticket Wind, The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl
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[Contain Monster: Ticket Wind]
[Containment Reward: Qi of the Ticket Wind]
[Qi of the Ticket Wind: Wind! Wind! Great wind! When the Ticket Wind rises, smoke and flames billow, the sky darkens, metallic money dissolves, laws are broken, combined force]
Told you so—this black-wind monster had tough hide. That whole body of black wind mixed with black sand didn’t just specialize in hurting flesh;
even the Way of the Jinche couldn’t finish it off in one strike.
And they named it “Black Wind”?
Really lowers its grade!
So it turns out to be a Ticket Wind.
But that made sense: after all, it had said it was raised by a foster mother, without biological parents, so it couldn’t receive teaching from bloodline elders.
Given that, for it to develop this far—pretty impressive.Lu Ding’s smile widened.
Red or gold would have been expected, but such a deep, high-value crimson was beyond Lu Ding’s expectations!
There was a record in the Daily Writings.
“If a wild beast or a domesticated animal suddenly speaks to people, it is the qi of the Ticket Wind. Drive it away with a peach branch... if it sticks in scarlet and is thrown away, then it is done... when the Ticket Wind enters a person’s house and takes something... it leaves its shoe there, and the road will be free of trouble. Within a year the household will have illness.”
This thing came from the Sleeping Earth Tiger Qin tomb, so it was also called the Sleeping Earth Tiger Qin Scroll.
Like an encyclopedia entry.
Qi of the Ticket Wind was only a small excerpt.
Roughly speaking, it said that during the Warring States and Qin-Han periods there was a folk custom.
If you encountered a wild animal or livestock that suddenly uttered human speech, that was the Ticket Wind causing trouble.
At that point, you shouldn’t run—what you must do is immediately take off your shoe and throw it out;
toss it away, and the disaster might stop.
If a Ticket Wind stole something, you still threw a shoe, but with a difference: anything touched by the Ticket Wind, after it’s retrieved, must be placed in a water-filled container and left in the middle of the road.
Only then could people continue to use it.
Otherwise, within a year the household would inevitably suffer calamity.
There was also an amusing conjecture: because the concept of the Ticket Wind originated in Qin-Han times, the Qin army’s chant of “wind, wind, great wind” might well have referred to this thing.
Of course that was just a possibility—not certain.
How Lu Ding found such an obscure ancient text? Because he hadn’t first read the antiquity;
he read a miscellany titled The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl.
Since The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl originated in the Western Zhou period and gradually expanded until modern times, its characters became increasingly vivid.
There were countless versions.
Lu Ding didn’t even know which version he had read.
He couldn’t recall the exact wording, but the gist was something like this:
One day the Cowherd had nothing to do, and everyone disliked him. Late at night he couldn’t sleep, so he went to chat with Old Ox, complaining that he had no wife and was of an age where even Old Ox looked attractive.
That terrified Old Ox.
It spoke.
“You must be out of your mind, man! Are you even thinking right? You’re thinking of me?”
The Cowherd froze. “How can you speak?!”
Right there, the text mentioned the qi of the Ticket Wind.
Lu Ding judged that this might be a Wei-Jin-Northern-and-Southern Dynasties version.
Those eras loved being absurd and beautiful.
The author really dared to write the Cowherd as lusting after Old Ox—what audacity!
Later Old Ox used the qi of the Ticket Wind to steal the Weaver Girl’s clothes.
That shifted Cowherd’s attention.
Afterward, when the Weaver Girl was taken back, the Cowherd rode Old Ox and fought the heavenly soldiers and generals!
Let’s be real.
Most retellings of the Cowherd and Weaver Girl focus on lovers unable to be together. Suddenly, one version inserts a fight—how could that not attract attention?
Although they still lost in the end and the Queen Mother drew a river to separate them, one difference was that when Old Ox saw the Weaver Girl taken, it feared being ogled by the Cowherd again—imagine that fellow pounding on the heated kang every night.
Who could stand that? Even a cow couldn’t stand it!
There was no choice.
Old Ox grit its teeth and sacrificed its flesh, using the qi of the Ticket Wind to bolster its hide and make a cowhide raft for the Cowherd.
It even said, “Remember to put me in water afterward. I can revive by myself. Remember!!!”
A thousand warnings and reminders, but afterward the ungrateful Cowherd thought: what if Old Ox won’t be available next year?
He turned selfish.
In the end he forgot his roots!
The whole story was full of fresh, bizarre details;
it was unlike anything else—a little cow standing on its head, unbelievable!
That’s why there was a record later of Lu Ding searching for the qi of the Ticket Wind.
Needless to say, it’s really hard to find;
online records are few and unreliable. He had to visit many libraries to find it.
Although he didn’t know how accurate it was, books were certainly more reliable than internet entries.
Anyone could edit an online encyclopedia.
Up to now everyone had been saying qi of the Ticket Wind, while what Lu Ding obtained was the Qi of the Ticket Wind—the character difference was small, but the implication was worlds apart.
The skill’s annotation even used words like “wind, great wind, dark-colored.”
Putting it together, Lu Ding became suspicious.
“I think I’ve got the genuine article...”
Remember, the First Emperor wore a dark-colored dragon robe, and “wind” was one of Qin dynasty’s slogans...
Hmm!!
Its origins weren’t simple.
Its power was domineering.
“When the Ticket Wind rises, smoke and flames billow.” The black sand particles in that description, after Lu Ding acquired the skill, he realized could be filled with his own demonic Meat Malevolence qi.
But it could not fuse with the Pumping Heart Flesh Malevolence technique.
They could only complement each other.
Ticket Wind mixed with meat malevolence in the black sand was like rolling smoke and flames, dissolving metallic money, breaking laws, combining force.
Lu Ding glanced at the “dissolve metallic money” line.
It was the last bit—“breaking laws, combined force”—that drew his attention.
The White Snake Shakes Scales technique was passive and non-stick—smooth, not very offensive.
Whether it had been used earlier in the Wei Gao nation calamity or in the Demon Suppression Cave, it had been passive.
But the Qi of the Ticket Wind was different.
“Breaking laws...”
Listen to that—how badass!
Still, that wasn’t Lu Ding’s favorite effect.
What he liked most was “combined force.”
Lu Ding raised his hand;
the scattered bricks across the ground were lifted by the Qi of the Ticket Wind.
As he moved his fingers, the bricks rotated;
falling fragments coalesced into pointed stone spikes.
Lu Ding’s eyes lit up.
Oh—elegant!!!
“Combined force” had implications in terms of levels and conceptual blending.
This needed careful study.
Nearby, Fu Xinghe, who had witnessed everything, stared blankly;
the book-based thinking habits he’d built in school were collapsing and shifting.
Images of Lu Ding killing He Yuhao and the black wind monster flashed repeatedly through his mind, opening his thought process to a different, stranger angle.
Is there something wrong with Lu Ding?
No.
Elder Shui trusted him so much;
his own uncle trusted him;
how could there be anything wrong?
And he was excellent!
Otherwise he wouldn’t have received the special merit award, nor would he have such ferocious combat power.
So the problem lay with himself—he needed to improve;
he was the one not good enough!
Although Lu Ding’s methods seemed more brutal and terrifying than demons.
What he did was justice!!!
He was exterminating pests!
All sorts of formulas ran through Fu Xinghe’s head.
It was like that snake game that keeps turning and swallowing rewards until the final bing-bing-bing...
Level cleared!!!
Fu Xinghe pushed up his glasses;
a flash of light slid across the lens, and he came to a conclusion!