Dao Of The Salted Fish (Salted Fish Cultivator)

While Sun Fuyu went out on long missions with Liu Zhongmin other direct disciples, Wen Zhihao finally started on his ink-reservoir plan.

First, he bought a cheap mortal ink brush and took it apart. Using that as a guide, Wen Zhihao collected the fur that stuck his robe. With some glue made from flour and water, Wen Zhihao gathered the fur into a brush-tip shape and stuck it inside one of the hollow reeds he had. Then he filled the reed from the other end with qi-infused ink and carefully attempted to write without it spilling out.

Needless to say, the brush tip was bad and the ink flow was messy and fast. Ink went all over the paper and onto his hands.

He experimented with making different brush tips, with different brush bodies, with ink of varying consistency. Eventually, his hands became so inkstained that it couldn’t be washed off, though Wen Zhihao was sure that someone must have invented a special expensive soap that could remove ink from skin.

In the end, he came up with something usable. The body was made of one thin, small bamboo inside a slightly larger thin hollow bamboo. Bamboo was strong enough that it wouldn’t snap, and the double layering was just in case the inner bamboo became saturated with ink.

To control the inkflow, he had to block most of the bottom part of the bamboo. A tiny piece of cloth was the first semi-permeable barrier that reduced inkflow. Before reaching the brush tip, the ink then had to squeeze through a tiny channel, which Wen Zhihao made by filling the bottom with a thick paste-like glue, leaving just a small pathway for the ink. The brush tip itself was then glued in.

The ink in the reservoir needed to be very smooth. Wen Zhihao hadn’t made a talisman for making smooth ink yet...but he planned to! The end part was then capped off with a small twig smoothed down to fit snuggly. He even made a cap for the brush tip side.

This took Wen Zhihao many, many days, during which he worked on his talisman quota the normal way with his normal brush. By the time he finally completed his brush pen, there was only one talisman left for his quota, which he wrote using the brush pen.

He then capped the pen again and placed it down, and tried not to think about how he had spent so much time on this one pen. And, before each use, he needed to recharge the ink with qi, since the qi had a tendency to leak out after a day or two.

There was an advantage: the smaller brush tip he made combined with the continuous, still fairly generous ink flow made his talisman handwriting look better. He remembered back in 21st-century earth, there had been some pens with extremely, extremely tiny tips which led to very fine writing by people-who-weren’t-him.

The next day, after re-energising sleep and re-energising food, Wen Zhihao packed his new fancy pen, some leftover talisman writing paper, and found a quiet place in the Sect gardens. It was just about summer now, and sitting in the shade of a tree felt very refreshing. Hehe, luckily he wasn’t a sword cultivator, or else he would have to train under the sun.

He no longer needed to mess around with dipping his brush into ink. Instead, he freely wrote out some more of his special talismans for air-cooling, bug-repelling, ice-making…If he gave some of the ice-making talismans to aunty chef Liu Jing, she might get the hint and make ice cream.

Ripples in the qi in the air made Wen Zhihao pause. It was all spiky and familiar, something that he felt from afar on many mornings.

An angry cultivator in golden robes stomped down the pathway, completely disregarding the scenery. The moment he saw Wen Zhihao, he became even angrier.

“Disciple Wen,” Zhang Wu gritted out. He raked his eyes over Wen Zhihao’s lazy posture, the mortal-looking bamboo pen, the messy scribbles on talisman paper—what a waste! Outer sect disciples these days, do none of them want to work? Do they think they’re so good already, that they’re all prodigies waiting to be uncovered?!

Wen Zhihao’s brows furrowed as Zhang Wu’s qi became even more violent. Wen Zhihao’s own qi spread out. “Fellow Daoist Zhang, take a deep breath. Release it…” 

Feeling the suppressing qi, only then did Zhang Wu realise that Wen Zhihao’s cultivation had somehow reached his own level! How in the Heavens did the wastrel Wen do that? It could be easily seen that Wen Zhihao was still poorer than most outer sect disciples, and the gossip was that Elder Liu Ru did not spend time training Wen Zhihao.

“Take a deep breath, release it…Feel the warm sun, listen to the rustling of the leaves...”

Zhang Wu resisted the basic meditation cultivation technique, but his qi rebelled as it preferentially flowed in a manner that copied Wen Zhihao. Despite himself, Zhang Wu slowly calmed down.

He didn’t like the feeling though. It made him feel weak.

“Did your students annoy you again?” Wen Zhihao asked. “Surely no one can provoke you more than me.”

Zhang Wu scoffed, but there wasn’t much heat in it. “Have you been in contact with them? They want me to introduce them directly to Senior Lin Yijun when they can’t even manage to reach Foundation Building! Oh, they need a better sword, oh, they need a different sword cultivation method, oh—”

Seeing that Zhang Wu was making himself angry again, Wen Zhihao felt that this young adult really needed more guidance. Aiya, and clearly no one else had done it, so it fell on Wen Zhihao’s shoulders.

He interrupted, saying, “Fellow Daoist Zhang, I will be impolite and tell you that your temperament is not suitable for teaching the outer sect disciples. I recommend you take a break or quit this job. Here, I have some talismans that can help.”

Wen Zhihao gathered a number of talismans. “Here, this will cool you down. Summer heat can make a person more irritable. It is said that more fights occur in hot weather. This produces very hot water, good for a bath. Together, you should have a much better night’s sleep, and wake up feeling refreshed for the next day. Hm, this one produces illusionary butterflies, perhaps you can use it as part of your sword training, or otherwise, they look quite cute.”

Speaking of cute, weren’t those big cats the cutest? 

“Fellow Daoist Zhang, are you busy right now?”

Zhang Wu was still looking suspiciously at the talismans stuffed in his hands, and absently replied, “When am I not busy?”

“Come with me.”

“What??!”

Wen Zhihao pushed Zhang Wu to the demonic beasts’ enclosure. Luckily it wasn’t too far away, or else Zhang Wu would have recovered enough to resist. Wen Zhihao skilfully undid the lock and gently shoved Zhang Wu inside. Wen Zhihao then locked the gate again behind them.

“Are you crazy?!!!!” Zhang Wu shouted, eyes widening at the large demonic beasts stalking towards them. He summoned his sword in a flash. His eyes widened further when Wen Zhihao suddenly picked up one of the demonic beasts.

Literally. Picked up. And the beast did not attack back. Instead, it made a little meow sound.

Zhang Wu backed away a step as Wen Zhihao approached him with the demonic beast. These claws, those teeth— 

In fact, Wen Zhihao had purposefully chosen the most docile of the cats. He set the cat down in front of Zhang Wu. “Put away your sword and hug it,” he ordered.

Dazed, Zhang Wu bent down and hugged it. Zhang Wu was used to following orders, so he had automatically obeyed Wen Zhihao’s pretending-to-be-the-boss voice.

“Doesn’t he feel soft and cute?”

“Yes…” Objectively, it was true.

Wen Zhihao didn’t have any cat food on him, but he did have some human food. Since these weren’t actual cats, it should be alright, right? He handed Zhang Wu a skewer of cooked meat. Once Zhang Wu hand-fed the cat, the cat became even more sticky, purring happily. Zhang Wu hesitantly started to pet the cat even without Wen Zhihao’s prompting, his eyes becoming a little soft and lost.

Wen Zhihao nodded to himself. Yep, he’s a bit tsundere.

Don’t quote me on how brush pens are made...the best link I could find about the insides of them is from here.

To be honest, my ULTIMATE OC is a crafting cultivator but o(TヘTo) I’m just still dreaming about that story and haven’t even started plotting it at all (so many story ideas, so little time/money)...