Chapter 287: Shinji: Wait, You Can Cultivate Immortality with Journey to the West?
Maybe it was because Shinji had been so polite all this time, but Qian Xuliang's tension had clearly eased.
He rubbed his thumbs together, smiling as he explained,
"You see, some thaumaturgical rituals are classified as confidential, of course—everyone understands that. I was just wondering, Shinji, how many magi you're actually planning to train?"
"Hmm… that's hard to say,"
Shinji replied cautiously.
"The number of magi I'll need depends on the size of my company. I can't really give you a solid figure right now."
"Oh?"
A flash of disappointment crossed Qian Xuliang's eyes.
Shinji caught the subtle change in his expression—but it didn't look like dissatisfaction. If anything, it seemed… disappointed?
"Brother Xuliang, do you have any suggestions?"
Hearing that, Qian Xuliang perked up right away, smiling brightly.
"Actually, Shinji—have you ever considered training local fangshi?"
"...Huh?"
Shinji raised an eyebrow.
'What is this?'
It was like a karate dojo politely sending its own students to train at a rival taekwondo school instead of smashing its signboard.
"Brother Xuliang, you'd better spell this out clearly," Shinji said bluntly. "Being cryptic just makes it hard for me to judge."
Qian Xuliang nodded and explained,
"It's nothing too complicated—I just want to find a better future for some of our young people. These days, it's not easy for fangshi to make a living."
"It shouldn't be hard for you guys to make money, no?"
Shinji asked, somewhat amused.
Qian Xuliang gave a bitter laugh.
"Making money with magecraft, sure, that's easy—but most ways of doing it happen to overlap with items in the criminal code."
It sparked Shinji's curiosity.
Where did China fangshi get their funding for arcane research? Unlike Japan's hereditary magi, most of them didn't have centuries of ancestral wealth to rely on.
And Qian Xuliang's answer nearly made Shinji's back go out.
"Where else? We apply for government subsidies!"
Pfffffft—!
Shinji sprayed out a mouthful of tea, utterly speechless.
"...Subsidies?" he repeated, dumbfounded.
Seeing Shinji had no clue how things worked here, Qian Xuliang hurried to explain.
At least two-thirds of China's fangshi survived on funding from above.
That support came in two main forms. One was through listing their techniques as intangible cultural heritage—and applying for cultural subsidies that way.
Which wasn't that surprising, really, given how broad the umbrella of intangible cultural heritage could be. Heck, even jokes could qualify as local non-material culture.
Basically, as long as a group of "craftsmen" could organize an association and made their living off that craft, they could usually get at least county-level intangible heritage support.
The other method was through religion.
Most people thought of Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity, or Islam when you mentioned China's religions.
Sure, there were mystic adepts among those four, but proportionally speaking, a much larger chunk came from folk beliefs beyond those mainstream religions.
This didn't refer to the traditional beliefs of minority groups, but rather temples like the Guandi Temple or City God Temple.
And yes—the person currently negotiating with Shinji, the miao zhu of the City God Temple, was the very representative of these local folk faiths in Lin'an.
By the way, there was something worth adding here.
Because of the Investiture of the Gods novel and the "Great Desolation" mythos it spawned, a lot of modern people liked to lump the Heavenly Court in with Taoism.
But in reality, the Jade Emperor, Lord Thunder, Mother of Lightning, the Dragon Kings, the King of the Underworld—all those deities actually belonged to folk beliefs of the common people, and had nothing directly to do with formal Taoism.
The Jade Emperor, Laozi, and even the Buddha himself—theoretically, those three stood on the same hierarchical level. There was no question of one being inherently superior to the others.
It was a bit like the heads of railways, highways, and airlines under the Ministry of Transport—regardless of how much power or resources each of them actually controlled, on paper, they were all equals.
Of course, people have different levels of wealth, and religions weren't any different.
Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity, and Islam—those were obviously the big four.
But places like the Guandi Temples or City God Temples? That depended on their location.
Qian Xuliang, as the miao zhu of Lin'an's City God Temple, wasn't exactly short on cash.
After all, the local City God in Lin'an happened to be none other than Wen Tianxiang—a legendary hero in Chinese history. With such a famous deity overseeing things, the temple got no shortage of visitors and donations every year.
Other smaller towns weren't so lucky.
Their City God Temples might honor unknown or unremarkable spirits, with no unique features, and naturally ended up relying on government subsidies to survive.
That had worked fine in the past, but in recent years things had gotten harder.
The economy was booming, but how could government funding possibly keep up with inflation?
Qian Xuliang, personally, was never in danger of going hungry—but he had to consider the brothers and juniors who depended on him.
That was exactly why Shinji's movie project, with its spiritual leylines and magic-fueled projection, hadn't met too many obstacles in China. When you got right down to it, money really did talk.
After hearing Qian Xuliang's explanation, Shinji couldn't help sighing about how rough magi had it worldwide in modern society.
Whether in Japan, Britain, North America, or China—there was always a bunch of magi with pockets emptier than their hopes.
Still, this "Brother Xuliang's" story gave Shinji a spark of inspiration.
These mystic folk scattered across China were, in Shinji's mind, practically the perfect candidates for installing, maintaining, and repairing his magical projection equipment.
They were spread far and wide, there were a lot of them, and they had a basic background in fangshu. If they could master the specific spells required, they'd make flawless skilled workers.
"Brother Xuliang," Shinji mused after a moment,
"How big a difference is there between your fangshu and our Western magecraft? Could they handle our systems?"
That question made Qian Xuliang's eyes light up instantly.
But instead of blurting out an answer, he studied Shinji carefully, afraid he might have misunderstood.
Shinji then laid out his entire idea about having the fangshi serve as installation and maintenance techs for the nationwide projection equipment.
"This is a great idea," Qian Xuliang nodded repeatedly, practically glowing with excitement. "It could solve employment for a huge group of people."
"I do have one question, though," Shinji continued seriously.
"Can you actually supply that many people?"
"In the short term, no way," Qian Xuliang admitted. "But we can train them. One region at a time, no problem. You aren't planning to open shops all across the nation tomorrow, are you?"
He laughed heartily, waving a hand in a carefree manner.
If this really came together, Qian Xuliang's prestige would skyrocket—Lin'an could easily become the new nerve center for fangshi in the modern era.
Seeing how confidently Qian Xuliang was promising everything, Shinji actually felt a twinge of hesitation.
"Isn't there quite a big difference between Western magecraft and your fangshu? Can your people really handle the transition?"
"Of course they can," Qian Xuliang replied with a smile.
"Honestly, fangshu isn't as mystical as people make it out to be. At its core, there's not much difference from your magecraft. It's just more focused on manipulating external forces, whereas your Western magic tends to work through internal magic circuits."
"Most of the things you'd be asking about, Shinji—working with leylines and such—those arrays and barriers are exactly what our fangshi specialize in."
Shinji sipped his tea thoughtfully.
"That's interesting. Maybe in the future, when we're researching projection technology, I can learn a few tricks from you."
Qian Xuliang laughed and said,
"If you want a good overview, Shinji, you can check out Journey to the West. It's practically a crash course on fangshu—think of it as a beginner's handbook."
"…"
The corner of Shinji's mouth twitched.
He remembered back in his past life, how some Qing dynasty Taoists believed Journey to the West had been written by Qiu Chuji and saw it as a grand treatise on alchemy.
Shinji couldn't help blurting out,
"So what, Journey to the West is really a cultivation manual?"
Qian Xuliang shook his head.
"Cultivation might be going too far. At best, you could call it a simplified, kid-friendly encyclopedia of China fangshu."
"You guys are really open-minded," Shinji said with genuine surprise. "Publishing something like that for ordinary people to read, that's pretty bold."
Qian Xuliang sighed and shrugged.
"You think we wanted to? By the time anyone realized what was in there, the book had already spread like wildfire. Even if we wanted to stop it, it was too late."
Then it was Qian Xuliang's turn to complain.
"I bet the author knew he was playing dirty. That's probably why he didn't leave his name, otherwise he'd have had every fangshi in the country digging up his grave."
"Haha… surely it wouldn't go that far?"
Shinji chuckled awkwardly.
But hearing Qian Xuliang's explanation, Shinji was almost convinced that Journey to the West really hadn't been written by Wu Cheng'en.
It made sense if you thought about it. The original name of the book was Journey to the West: Dispelling Calamities.
The only "proof" that Wu Cheng'en wrote it was a mention in an official Ming-dynasty bibliography that listed a book by him called Journey to the West.
But seriously, what did Wu's Journey to the West have to do with Journey to the West: Dispelling Calamities?
That same Ming bibliography grouped Wu Cheng'en's Journey to the West alongside a bunch of geography books—it was hard to believe a novel somehow sneaked in among them.
Most likely, Wu's Journey to the West was just his personal travel diary about going west himself, with no connection to the famous classic novel at all.
That was basically the same reasoning those Qing Taoists used to credit Qiu Chuji, since Qiu had written The True Man of Long Spring's Journey to the West—a travel journal.
By that logic, they figured Qiu Chuji must have been the author of the novel, too.
If you thought about the textual inheritance, Journey to the West: Dispelling Calamities was really just a fanfiction spin-off of the Yuan-dynasty Journey to the West storytelling scripts.
It became so wildly popular that it flat-out replaced the original storytelling scripts, to the point the older version was lost entirely.
That wasn't even "fanfic turned canon"—that was fanfic annihilating the canon.
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