Chapter 69: The Power of Faith

Fang Xu watched Qiu Chuji and Old Wu, who were still licking their lips, with a smile. It seemed neither of them had quite had their fill yet.

"Isn't this a bit too sweet? Can sugarcane really taste so fragrant and honeyed?" Old Wu looked at Fang Xu in disbelief, while Qiu Chuji, equally curious, waited for his answer.

"Don’t underestimate this little jar of cane sugar. It’s the very essence condensed from many stalks of sugarcane. What do you think?" Fang Xu replied, a hint of exasperation in his tone.

Fortunately, the sugarcane had been found growing on the mountain behind the Quanzhen Monastery, a peculiarity Fang Xu had noticed upon arriving in the village. Many patches of sugarcane grew wild on those hillsides, yet hardly anyone came to harvest them—a detail that piqued Fang Xu’s curiosity.

When he asked Qiu Chuji about it, he learned the reason: the sugarcane grown here had a rather poor flavor, so the villagers saw little point in reaping it. Most simply left the cane to rot where it stood.

But to Fang Xu, this was not a dead end, but rather an opportunity—a potential business venture. No matter the taste of the raw cane, as long as it was mature, it could be boiled down to make sugar, and he was well acquainted with the taste of cane sugar.

Initially, Fang Xu hadn’t planned to use cane sugar; if honey were available, he would have preferred that. But he had no way of knowing if honey existed in this era, and even if it did, it would be a rare and unpredictable find. With an abundance of cane at hand, why look elsewhere?

After preparing the sugar, Fang Xu instructed Old Wu and the others to smear some across the ground, and with the leftover syrup, he wrote the four large characters for “Quanzhen Monastery” on the formerly battered monastery wall.

How could the wild creatures of the forest possibly resist such temptation? Looking at the expressions of Old Wu and Qiu Chuji now, was any further evidence needed? As for the wall, it was bait set for the ants; when the villagers saw that the ants climbing the wall appeared to trace out the four characters “Quanzhen Monastery,” the mere visual impact would be enough to astonish them. Who would scrutinize it more closely?

“And what about those ants that made way for the villagers?” Old Wu asked, curiosity gleaming in his eyes. He could accept the earlier explanations, but he still wondered: why, when the villagers entered the main hall, did the ants and crawling insects on the ground part to let them pass? There had to be some trick to it—otherwise, Old Wu truly couldn’t believe it. He even began to suspect that Fang Xu might actually possess some supernatural powers.

“It’s a simple principle—mutual generation and restraint,” Fang Xu answered, the corners of his mouth lifting slightly. In truth, he believed this step was the key to the entire plan. Without it, the earlier spectacle with the sugar and the wild birds might not have been enough to convince the villagers. As the saying goes, “hearing is illusion; seeing is believing.” There’s a world of difference between hearsay and personal experience.

What Fang Xu employed was the doctrine of mutual generation and restraint—a touch of biology, really, though it would be troublesome to explain in detail. Simply put, he had scattered cane sugar inside the main hall, attracting swarms of ants and crawling insects, as if they were guardians of the monastery. At the entrance, he had prepared a small trap for the villagers coming down from the mountain.

He knew that once the strange beast statue was discovered among the wilds, the steward would surely bring the villagers up the mountain to investigate—there was no avoiding it. The villagers had already come to see the Quanzhen Monastery as their anchor, the place they instinctively turned to when faced with the unknown. Fang Xu merely played upon this reliance.

There was only one path up to the monastery, and along this trail, Fang Xu had scattered a traditional herb known to repel insects, with a few subtle modifications of his own. He hoped only that the villagers’ shoes would pick up a trace of its scent.

If the soles picked up too much of the herbal substance, it could ruin the plan altogether, perhaps even causing it to fail before it began. To the insects, the cane sugar was a treasure, but survival took precedence over sweetness. If the villagers’ shoes were coated with the herb, then stepping into the courtyard would cause it to mix with the syrup on the ground, and the insects would avoid that spot, leaving a conspicuous gap—hardly the effect Fang Xu desired.

But if it were only a faint scent, especially after Fang Xu’s adjustments, things would be different. As the villagers approached, the insects would detect the herbal aroma and instinctively part ways; but once the shoe had passed, the scent would fade beneath the overpowering sweetness of the sugar, and the ants would return to swarm the spot once more. Thus, the precise effect Fang Xu intended was achieved.

At first, he had been anxious, knowing that even the best-laid plans might amount to nothing. The outcome, however, proved most satisfying. Upon hearing Fang Xu’s explanation, Qiu Chuji and Old Wu looked at him in utter disbelief. Old Wu, for his part, had never imagined the whole affair could be so simple. Could such basic tricks really persuade the villagers to believe in Fang Xu’s illusions? Was it truly that easy?

“Sometimes, it’s best not to underestimate the power of faith,” Fang Xu said with a smile, for Old Wu’s face had already betrayed all his unspoken doubts.