Chapter 146: The Oil Ghost

Meanwhile, Qi Yan was undergoing a rather bizarre special training session.

The apartment rented by Uncle Yan and the others in the city was a three-bedroom unit in a newly developed residential complex not too far from Cocoa Studio, into which they had moved only recently.

"You've already had me memorizing incantations for over a week now. This is honestly more grueling than taking the college English tests back in the day. What kind of wretched spells are these... chanting them makes the nerves at the back of my eyes ache," Qi Yan muttered as he genuinely massaged his temples.

Over the past few days, Uncle Yan had begun teaching Qi Yan how to perform ghost-lowering sorcery. However, metaphysical skills of this nature were inherently difficult to master. To achieve quick results, the training had to be strictly targeted.

"Oh, you can't rush a good meal... Chanting is the absolute foundation, a step you simply cannot bypass. Just think of it as learning theoretical knowledge. We're taking it step-by-step, and I'm already putting you through an intensive crash course. Back when Xuanxuan first started learning from me, she spent several months just learning how to recite the chants... Besides, most magical arts require chanting anyway. Even Maoshan Taoism relies on incantations, doesn't it?"

Uncle Yan placed several delicate little wooden boxes on the table in sequence.

Qi Yan sighed and said, "At least Maoshan Taoism is in Chinese. These lowering spells... sound almost like birdsong. I can't even use pinyin annotations like I used to do for English vocabulary because many of the syllables simply don't have Mandarin equivalents."

It had been seven or eight days since school "started," and Qi Yan had done almost nothing except learn how to pronounce those tongue-twisting incantations.

Sorcery arts almost always required chanting—sometimes silently, but at the very least mentally. The problem was that the cultural barrier was quite significant, making the spell texts exceptionally difficult to commit to memory.

And this was just giving him a handful of isolated incantations related to ghost-lowering; when counted up, there were several hundred varieties... Mastering them all in the short term was entirely impossible, so he had no choice but to selectively learn those suited to his own physical condition. That was what made it a crash course.

Uncle Yan chuckled and waved his hand, saying, "Alright, alright, stop complaining. Young people just lack patience when learning things. According to proper tradition, taking on an apprentice in sorcery requires enshrining statues at home, along with a host of tedious rituals. If the current situation wasn't so tense, I would never let you learn things so carelessly... Come, come, no theory today. Let's have you learn something practical."

Hearing this, Qi Yan immediately perked up. Naturally, lecturing purely on theoretical knowledge was extremely dry. Just listening to the knowledge regarding the three types of raising child ghosts in Southeast Asia had taken him a whole day.

He walked over and saw that Uncle Yan had brought out five palm-sized wooden boxes from his room. They were slightly dark in color, completely identical, with no visible differences.

Looking at these items in puzzlement, Qi Yan raised his head as Uncle Yan instructed, "Because of that dark talisman plate of yours, your constitution has turned yin. In the terminology of domestic Taoism, this has directly opened your 'yin-yang eyes,' which is why you are now able to perceive the true forms and phantoms of most spirits."

"Now, take a look at these five small boxes. Their appearances are completely identical. Four of them are empty, and I've placed a... *you gui zai* inside just one of them. Find it for me and tell me which box it's in."

The term "*you gui zai*" used by Uncle Yan was considered quite a professional piece of jargon.

Raising child ghosts is broadly divided into three categories: oil child ghosts, statue child ghosts, and evil child ghosts.

In ancient Thailand, the creation of child ghosts invariably involved using the corpses of infants and corpse oil as materials. However, as society evolved, "oil child ghosts" and "statue child ghosts" no longer utilized actual corpses or corpse oil. Thai people began to envereate them as divine statues, calling them "Kuman Thong," which translates to Golden Boy.

Yet, precisely because the most crucial black magic elements had been removed—lacking the raw materials of actual infant corpses and corpse oil—ordinary Kuman Thong served as merely symbolic offerings, their efficacy drastically reduced. It remained entirely uncertain whether the souls of child spirits even resided within those child statues.

Consequently, in the modern era, only "evil child ghosts" could truly be considered authentic child-raising! An example was the multi-eyed freak summoned by Uncle Yan in Jinyan Village.

True "oil child ghosts" had become exceedingly rare nowadays; at the very least, the child ghost statues enshrined in ordinary Thai households were substandard, mass-produced replicas meant merely to provide psychological comfort to devout and kind-hearted people.

Only genuine sorcerers like Uncle Yan and Xuanxuan stood a chance of harboring a true "oil child ghost."

The method of creating an oil child ghost was as follows: the sorcerer carved an extremely miniature child ghost figurine out of bamboo. This object was placed inside a glass jar, and Buddha oil was poured in until it reached the figurine's chest, thus forming a vessel.

Next came the most critical step: the master performing consecration rituals to summon spirits! The soul of a wrongfully killed child who could neither be reincarnated nor salvaged was enticed to infuse into the vessel. After a series of procedures, the entity was ready to be tended to.

Its functions were numerous, such as enhancing the worshipper's fortune, attracting wealth, drawing interpersonal favor, warding off accidents, protecting the household, and so on.

The prerequisite, however, was that the worshipper had to cherish it as dearly as their own flesh and blood, nurturing it with sincere devotion.

If tended to properly, the child ghost would let its "parents" know of its presence through means such as prophetic dreams, making televisions turn themselves on and off, or shifting the positions of objects.

Over the years, Uncle Yan had successively raised over a hundred of these conventional "oil child ghosts" himself!

Truth be told, the souls of these child ghosts were merely those of pathetic little children who had died, unable to be reincarnated or delivered. If Uncle Yan had not "adopted" them, they would likely have wandered the mortal realm for a very long time, and their temperament truly resembled that of ordinary young children...

Only after Uncle Yan had accumulated enough good deeds and amassed sufficient karmic merit could he truly help these child ghosts escape their sea of suffering and achieve ultimate salvation.

Thus, a sorcerer like him—who possessed faith and persisted in righteous, kind intentions—had long since made performing good deeds and accumulating virtue a habit and an instinct. Perhaps a year or two might not seem like much, but maintaining such a pristine heart for decades... meant his spiritual cultivation was truly profound.

Qi Yan gazed at the five wooden boxes before him. He understood what Uncle Yan meant. Much like the game of guessing which cup a green bean was hidden under, he certainly wasn't allowed to lift the lids and look inside. After all, anyone with eyes could see them that way, so what kind of magical training would that even be?

"To control a certain spiritual entity, one must first establish a channel of communication with it. Through communication, both parties are equals; this is not dark sorcery. However, if you wish to communicate with ghosts, you must first train yourself to 'perceive' them," Uncle Yan said with a sweep of his hand. "Go on, give it a try."

Qi Yan rolled up his sleeves, took a deep breath, and swept his gaze across the wooden boxes on the table one by one.

The naked eye of an ordinary person certainly couldn't tell the difference, but this involved a certain degree of telepathic resonance. One of these five wooden boxes contained the spirit of a child ghost, and given his current constitution, sensing its presence wasn't difficult.

Qi Yan merely observed closely for half a minute, placing his left hand hovering above one of the wooden boxes in a gentle, phantom-touching gesture.

Soon, he felt that unique "ghostly aura" characteristic of spirits—a sensation of unprovoked, chilling coldness. Although very faint, it was nevertheless present.

"This is the one!" He pinpointed the target in a single attempt: the second wooden box from the left.

A smile surfaced on Uncle Yan's face, though it wasn't the warm smile of reassurance, but rather the amused smirk of someone watching a good show. "Not bad, very good... Don't get cocky. This is just the very initial stage for beginners. As long as someone with a somewhat yin-leaning constitution calms their mind, they can perceive it. Step by step, let's turn up the difficulty for you."

"Dalong... Dalong!"

After shouting twice, Hao Dalong emerged from his room wearing a padded winter coat. "What's all the racket?"

With a wave of his hand, Uncle Yan commanded, "Put on some *mu-sic*!"

Having just stepped out of his room, Hao Dalong was momentarily dazed by the sudden order. "Huh? What-sic?"

"Oh... Music! Heavy music!"

"Oh, oh, oh... Music? Oh! Right, right, right, okay, music, music..."

With that, he turned around to switch on the home stereo system.