Artisans in Tunli

Chapter 17 Entering the Dao
The beggar was disheveled, his hair was covered with mud, his eyes were still blind, and he was enjoying the shade under a tree.As soon as the two approached, before he opened his mouth, the beggar spoke first.

"May I ask why these two fellow Taoists are here?" Zhang Muzhen was confused at that time. He was blind, how could he know that they were Taoist priests?Turning to look at the master, he was very calm.

"Old man, worry too much. My master and my apprentice were wandering around when the war started. I dare not say that the demons are exterminated. The main purpose is to heal the sick and save the people. Passing through this place, I feel that there is an evil spirit here, so I plan to ask I wonder if the old man can tell me something about it?" After listening to the master's words, the old beggar nodded and slowly told about the strange things that happened in the village.

Master Zhang Muzhen said: "Pindao thinks that this matter is not so simple. I think there should be people of the same kind who are here to make trouble. I don't know if there were any suspicious people here before the outbreak of the plague?"

"I'm blind. I can't see. I only heard that some kind of Taoist priest came. He looked at the Broken Taoist Temple in Xishan and said that the people in the village have defiled their sect so much. To make the people in the village suffer retribution or something. Later, the Taoist priest disappeared, but it didn’t take long before it really came true. I guess, you two must be wearing Taoist robes and were seen by the villagers. Don't ask me that."

When I saw this, I felt a bit unbelievable. Of course, there were indeed many evil monks and demons in history, but after all, they were a minority. To kill so many lives for such a small thing, his cultivation is also an evil way.

Master Zhang Muzhen naturally didn't believe it, but he didn't say it to his face, he just said goodbye, and the two returned to the small Taoist temple.

After the master went back, he didn't say a word, and then suddenly seemed to think of something.Immediately afterwards, he drove Zhang Muzhen away, and gave Zhang Muzhen his close-fitting Mingwen dagger, and severed the master-student relationship with Zhang Muzhen in front of the broken statue of Taishang Laojun, and told Zhang Muzhen to go back to Jiangxi as soon as possible.

Zhang Muzhen was young and ignorant, he didn't know what he had done wrong, so he cried and begged his master not to drive him away.In the end, let the master kick it out.

But he didn't go far, fearing that his master would encounter some danger, he spent the whole night in the woods to deal with it.When I went to find the master the next day, I found that the master had died in the Taoist temple.Zhang Muzhen didn't know what happened at that time, but he was digging a hole beside the Taoist temple and weeping.

Zhang Muzhen originally planned to return to Jiangxi, but at that time the Japanese army had already occupied most of Jiangxi, and when he was in a dilemma, a kind-hearted family named Mu in the village took Zhang Muzhen in.This family lives by making paper, and the husband and wife have no children, so they treat Zhang Muzhen as if they were their own sons.

The adoptive mother is ingenious and skillful, and she is good at handwork, and she taught Zhang Muzhen all of them.The adoptive father is also not ordinary, born with a pair of yin and yang eyes.The two taught Zhang Muzhen what they knew, and they knew that sooner or later, Zhang Muzhen would leave them.

In fact, the technique of paper-tying is not that simple. You have to follow the procedure step by step. Don't be impatient and be careful.You don’t want to send a monster to your deceased relatives.

After the founding of New China, Zhang Muzhen left Yinyangtun. Before leaving, his adoptive mother revealed the secrets of Yinyangtun.

Before that, there was indeed an old Taoist, but this old Taoist came after the plague.In order to control the plague, Lao Dao had to isolate the people who had already caught the plague to a village on one side, and waited for him to figure out a way to rescue them.

The old beggar's wife was also in the isolated crowd. The beggar knelt in front of the old Taoist and begged him, hoping to release his wife.

The old Taoist is also unwilling to do this, but there is no way to do it. If the plague really spreads, people will be burned and more people will die.

As a result, the beggar's wife died that night.The old beggar was so angry that he planned to let the old Taoist be buried with him by using the voodoo technique handed down from his family.

The power of the Gu technique depends entirely on whether the performer is vicious or not.He dug out his own eyes to act as the introduction of Gu.As a result, not only did the kind old Daoist succeed in killing, but half of the villagers died of the plague.

So everyone drove him out, and people were immersed in pain all the time. In fact, the old beggar had no intention of harming others, but was just impulsive and caused a catastrophe.

After hearing what his adoptive mother said, Zhang Muzhen didn't show anything, except that he always felt very strange about the death of his master, and he became more determined that he must eliminate harm for the people.

Seeing this gave me a deep understanding of the word anger. It seems that people should maintain reason no matter what the situation is.

The things I remember in this travel note are intermittent, and there are many places in it that I can’t read smoothly. Since Zhang Mu really wants me to understand these things, why didn’t he just tell me?It was shown to me at a loss, and many places were made up by my own brain.

I closed the notebook and heard Li Xiaozhentian snoring.Stand up and move around, planning to go out for a cigarette.

As soon as I reached the corner of the stairs, I found that there was already a person standing there.When he got closer, he saw that it was a woman in a hospital gown, with disheveled mid-length hair and a sickly face.

I borrowed the fire from her and exchanged some pleasantries. It turned out that she was only anemic, and the family insisted that she be hospitalized.Under the dim light, one can see that she looks very handsome, with a bit of sadness in her delicate appearance, if you don't look carefully, she still looks a bit like Sun Jing.I don't know if it's because of longing, but now my mind is full of Sun Jing's face, saying something to me, but I didn't hear it.

"Don't go to sleep, are you here to take care of me, or to sleep?" Li Xiao was already awake, and was roaring in my ear.

"Why don't you have such a temper when you drink too much and get beaten up?" I stretched and followed him out of the ward.

In order to investigate the cause of his master's death, Zhang Muzhen went to Hunan and Yunnan successively, but found nothing.So I returned to my hometown in Northeast China, where I stayed for nearly 40 years.

When Zhang Muzhen returned to his hometown, he didn't see his parents whom he hadn't seen for many years. Some said he was killed by Hu Zi;

At that time, it was probably the most difficult time for Zhang Muzhen.

I have to go to work every day, and I often don’t have enough to eat.Fortunately, not long after the hard times, he also has an elder brother, who is my uncle's father.His elder brother has always taken care of him, but Zhang Muzhen's own abilities were completely unusable in that era.

Fortunately, there were many things in small villages at that time.He is also relatively closed-off, and he is not surprised by these feudal superstitions. Zhang Muzhen occasionally does rituals, helping someone choose a yin house, watching Feng Shui, and earning eggs, rice, noodles and the like.

One day, a man who was about ten years older than himself approached Zhang Muzhen and said he wanted him to help, but he didn't want to tell Zhang Muzhen what it was, as he would know when it came time.This person is none other than my great grandfather.

Seeing this, I was also very curious, it turned out that the great grandfather knew Zhang Muzhen very early.Suddenly thinking of the grandpa I saw in the black ditch before, I always felt that there must be some ulterior secret in it.I continued to look back with doubts, but it turned out that there was a lot of space behind, and on the scorched paper at the back, there was only written: Heigouzi? ? ?

Seeing the three question marks behind it, I thought that it was not easy to see this old man use punctuation marks for the first time.Turning to the next page, I found that about three pages of paper had been torn off.

I'm so in a state of mind, you are TJ.I've watched it for so long, and finally got a little dry. You just kicked me off a cliff all at once.

Turning back, I still didn’t see anything, but on the fourth page of paper, I saw some words printed on it. I hurriedly searched through boxes and boxes for a pencil, and traced the few words on it.

"Three-day machine longevity" except for these three words that look familiar, I really don't know how to connect them.Forget it, maybe Zhang Muzhen just didn’t want me to see this.

This travel note is almost like a heavenly book, sometimes it is a single word; sometimes there are some words that I can't understand;

In short, after reading it, I probably understand what Zhang Muzhen means. It is not only difficult to embark on this path of cultivation, but there will be many things I don’t want to see, and my family may also have The danger is inside.

But now my question doesn't allow me to think about that because it seems like I'm in trouble now.I had to learn something real to get me through.A talisman, a jade pendant, can't solve my current problems.

I found a plastic bag to wrap the notebook, carefully put it in the bag, and planned to find a chance to go to the Zhang family in the next two days. It was time to learn from a teacher, and I would have no chance when school started.

"Son, your eldest sister is back, I asked her to come to our house for dinner at night." Now when I hear about dinner, I feel upset.

Although food is the most important thing for the people, don't do it so often.Frowning, I flicked through the phone's address book, swiping up and down with my fingers, but finally stopped at Sun Jing's name.

I'm not a sentimental person, but I think most people should be like this, no matter how that person treats you, you always think about her.This longing obviously made me feel miserable, and I don't know how long this emotion will accompany me, especially when I am doing nothing, it becomes more and more serious.

Missing is a disease with no cure.

During dinner, Wang Jingjing kept asking the elder sister about the mess, whether it was hard to study for graduate school, and whether she had a boyfriend.I sat on the side and laughed with me, and the elder sister also tried to answer Wang Jingjing's various deadly trifecta as much as possible.

"I said, Wang Jingjing, can you take care of yourself? If you let yourself go so much now, I don't think it's as good as your brother, or you won't go to college." I don't know if Ergu said this to Wang Jingjing The words are still told to me, and every sentence is heart-wrenching.

The eldest sister smoothed things over, saying that my major is very popular, and now that the social demand is high, it will be easier to find a job in the future.After the elder sister finished speaking, I didn't know how to defend myself.

Although I have been studying for a few months, most of the time I have been scribbling on the books without learning anything.I lowered my head and stuffed the rice into my mouth without saying a word.

As we get older, we naturally have more and more troubles.I believe that in the not-too-distant future, wages, wives and children should be discussed at the dinner table.I'm most afraid of these things, maybe I haven't taken on them yet, this meal is not just stuffing food into my mouth, it's also an encouragement, I have to work hard.

Standing in front of Zhang's house, my heart is in a state of turmoil.Zhang Muzhen seems to have the personality of a Northeast person, but there are subtleties in the rough, and sometimes the words he says are sincere and worth pondering.

Unknowingly, the hand holding the tea leaves was sweating.What should I do if he refuses to take me as an apprentice?If I'm really mediocre, can't I learn it?In another case, if I really hurt my family, how can I have the face to live in the world?
Although a little uneasy, he pressed the doorbell anyway.It was Liu Chunling who opened the door. She was not surprised to see me, but smiled politely.She spent the entire Spring Festival at Zhang's family, and she didn't know how much we helped his family, and we even contributed money and effort.Walking in, I found Zhang Muzhen sitting in front of the coffee table drinking tea, seeing me enter the door, he slowly put down the teacup in his hand.

"Come on, sit down." He calmly beckoned me to sit down, picked up a teacup and made me a cup of tea.The faint scent of tea floated into my nose.I don't like drinking tea very much, and I don't know what kind of tea it is, but it smells good anyway.In fact, not only drinking tea, I rarely drink water, and if I drink a little more, I have to go to the toilet constantly.

"Master Zhang, I..." Zhang Muzhen stopped me before I could finish my words. He was going to write about his travel notes and said to me slowly.

"Actually, I don't mean anything else by giving you this book. I just want you to know that if you learn the Tao, you must find out the cause of master's death for me."

"Huh? That's it?"

"That's right, what do you think?" I really don't understand this old man, it's a bit like when you were in nine-year compulsory education, asking you to analyze what the author wants to express in a composition.But in fact, the author didn't think too much at that time, just wrote it casually.

But when it comes to the cause of his master's death, I think it should be beggars who are playing tricks.

"It wasn't made by an old beggar. I thought the same as you at first, but later I realized that I had neglected the most important thing."

This old man is simply a roundworm in my stomach. I knew what I was going to say before I even opened my mouth.I quickly asked, what is the important thing?

"Yinyangtun is the key." After Zhang Muzhen finished speaking, he took a sip of tea.I found that the steam rising from the teacup in his hand was not obviously agitated by his movements.

"What's wrong with Yinyangtun? Master Zhang, I'm in a hurry, can you finish talking together." After hearing what I said, he laughed instead, then put down his teacup and stared at me and said:

"That's what you have to do in the future. All the puzzles will be solved by you."

(End of this chapter)