Refuse to trample on the pride of heaven

Chapter 373: Sprouting (more brain-burning)

Just as I was about to take a closer look at the inscription on the base of the shrine, the shadow of the eternal lamp suddenly flickered.

The scholar noticed it keenly, and turned his head to see an old man in a light blue Taoist robe coming out from behind the curtain. The locust branch pattern embroidered with silver thread on the collar flickered with his steps.

He is a mortal with something to his name—the subconscious coldness in the scholar's eyes disappeared.

It's just some stuff.

The old Taoist priest was standing on tiptoe, stepping on the golden spots all over the ground, adding oil to a lantern between the pillars. The snow-white goat beard was reflected in a warm orange by the firelight.

"I am a poor Taoist Qingxuan. Would you like to burn some incense?"

Taoist Qingxuan brushed off the incense ash on his sleeves. A calico cat curled up in the shadow of the altar. Suddenly, it jumped onto the ebony table. The pine soot ink knocked over by its claws spread across the plain silk in clouds, and it bared its teeth at the scholar.

Taoist Qingxuan exclaimed "Ouch!", picked up the chubby Sanhua and patted his round butt.

"Go play somewhere else."

Sanhua yelled in dissatisfaction and ran away.

When the Taoist looked over, the scholar had already put on his usual smile - people's smiles are the hardest to identify, they can be strong and sincere, or they can be false, forced, or even contain deep meanings.

"Is there anything I can help you with?"

"No need, I'm here to look for someone."

"Oh?"

Someone came to the City God Temple, but he wasn't there to burn incense and seek comfort. This... it's hard not to make people feel that he was there to cause trouble.

"Who are you looking for?"

After hearing a lot of Lu Wensheng's stories, the scholar thought that the Taoist priest might know the other party, so he didn't want to reveal too much.

“Find someone you want to be.”

But looking at the pilgrims, the scholar's curiosity changed.

"You said, if the destiny is determined by heaven and the hexagrams can be calculated, why should we believe it? I have not tasted the pain of this world, and I have searched all the roads but found nothing, leaving only one thought in the mystery."

Taoist Qingxuan shook his head and looked at the shrine: "The hexagram is like pine smoke entering the water, and the horoscope is like ink staining white silk. People in the world ask for divination, but they are just using the mysterious door to peek into their own obsessions."

Yes, it has seen all kinds of people, and people’s thoughts are always endless.

"Ordinary people always like to wrap their greed in incense ash - those who seek marriage want to lock in the freshness of their skin, and those who seek fame want to step on the backs of others. You also said so - if someone can calculate the twelve reincarnations of immortals, why do we still believe in these messy prayers?"

Okay, I am sending you a kind greeting. Do you want to shake my determination? !

Taoist Qingxuan's eyes turned sharp for a moment, and he started discussing Taoism.

"Have you ever seen a Sophora japonica tree in bloom? The silver Sophora japonica tree is covered with snow in April, but its nectar is very poisonous. Just like those believers who kowtow, the blood on their foreheads mixed with obsession seeps into the blue bricks - do you think they are seeking fame and fortune? They are just seeking an excuse to continue living.

People are inherently complicated.

It's like a young man who is unable to take care of his mother, so he kowtows three hundred times in the snow, hoping that a kind-hearted person will take responsibility for his mother's misfortune. Do you think he is seeking filial piety or peace of mind for his own conscience?

During a famine, a child put the last bite of bread into his sister's mouth - what do you think he was asking for? "

The life of a phantom demon is to constantly observe and imitate in order to obtain its own prey. Although this process will swallow up many memories, the fragmented fragments all portray it as a mean, indifferent, and selfish one.

Time is just constantly conveying one message - it is a cold observer and imitator. No matter how much emotion it shows, it is all fake, because it actually lacks perception.

For a non-human who is still a novice in human nature studies, talking about these things with a big shot in human nature studies is like hitting a rock with an egg. Taoist Qingxuan will reshape its cognition.

Therefore, Taoist Qingxuan's words could be regarded as a dimensionality reduction attack, and it was a little confused.

“You laugh at the greed of the world, but you don’t know what the benevolent seek, which is only good weather and good harvests in all seasons, peace and prosperity for the country and the people.

They didn't even realize that the so-called "greed" might just be a wanderer missing his parents by the lamp, or a separated person thinking of his hometown under the moon.

Look at the thousands of believers, they kowtow every three steps, bend their backs every nine steps, their foreheads are frost-stained, their knees are covered with yellow dust, using their bodies as rafts to cross the sea of ​​suffering - how many of them really go there for fame and gain?"

The scholar's rebuttal was weak: "If you don't ask for anything, you won't have desires. If you don't have desires, you'll be strong."

"If that were true, how come this temple has been popular for thousands of years? A stick of incense expresses all the wishes of the human world: Who can avoid birth, old age, sickness and death? How can we control separation, reunion, sorrow and joy? Good and bad fortune, happiness, anger, sorrow and joy, greed, anger, ignorance, reunion and separation - which of these can you avoid?

Even if one can transcend oneself, can one break the prison of the five elements of heaven and earth? Can one sever the ties of blood and relatives?

Man is the descendant of the earth, the earth carries the heaven, the heaven follows the law, the law follows nature.

You think you have understood the mystery and proved the cause and effect yourself, but you don't know that you are just sitting in a well and looking at the sky, and you are just talking nonsense. "

The scholar felt a little dazed, his mind feeling hazy, as if knowledge was passing through his brain, and the folds of his cerebral cortex were instantly smoothed and stretched, as if he was walking in a forest - a feeling that he could not stay at all.

Qingxuan trembled his beard: A rotten tree cannot be carved!

But it believed one thing - the Taoist priest in front of it seemed like there was something real.

Whether it was exploring people's emotions or habits, it had never received any clear guidance. Now, the Taoist Qingxuan in front of it made it feel thirsty for knowledge.

It was convinced and showed an attitude of asking questions without hesitation.

"People worship clay statues only to exchange for blessings. How can it be called 'sacrificing one's life for justice'? Knowing that gods and Buddhas will not save ants, why do people always throw themselves into the fire? Even ants are greedy for life, but those who commit suicide as martyrs are clearly destroying their most precious lives. Is this kind of madness that goes against instinct considered transcendence or stupidity?"

To it, the most precious thing is life. Therefore, it also questions the contradiction between the utilitarianism of faith and the spirit of sacrifice, and cannot understand the self-destructive nobility of the human race. This is something it cannot understand no matter how hard it tries.

Taoist Qingxuan stroked the candle flame and said, "You see moths flying into flames and call them foolish, but you don't know the meaning. People worship gods not for transactions, but to use clay figures to reflect the mirror in their hearts... It is not to bargain with gods, but to establish a contract with their own conscience.

Those who sacrifice their lives for justice, what they sacrifice is their skin and furnace, but what they gain is the eternal fire of their hearts that will last for thousands of years - they use their flesh and blood as lamp oil to light something more permanent than their flesh and blood.

"You are confused because you measure value with life and death - you can't see through it because you confine the 'precious' to the physical body." The Taoist priest pushed the copper lamp with a burning yellow flame towards the scholar, pulling its heart and making it skip a beat, feeling that it was seen through.

"Ants' greed for life is the way, and moths flying into the fire is also the way.

What you see as self-destruction is actually turning your broken self into a raft to carry you through the world. As for whether it can carry the mortal world... I'm afraid the answer will only be known when you learn to shed tears."

Crying? It will... But looking at Taoist Qingxuan's expression, the scholar had a hunch that the "cry" he mentioned might not be the same as what he understood.

The scholar watched the flickering candle flame, and Taoist Qingxuan's voice unconsciously fell into his heart.

"Only by adhering to one's original heart can one overcome oneself and win. Such an act of self-control may require sacrificing one's life. At this moment, the divine nature will be revealed, the faith will be as firm as a rock, and destiny will quietly emerge between the choices."

The most precious and dazzling thing in a person is never the heartbeat or body temperature, but the madness of pressing the spark into the next chest even though one knows that the flesh and blood body will eventually turn into bones.

The incense ashes in the hall fell into the copper furnace, just like countless extinguished and rekindled flames of civilization.