A scholar with gray hair left the village school with a young man in blue shirt and came to the archway. The most knowledgeable teacher in the town looked a little haggard, and pointed to a plaque above his head, "What do the four words mean when it comes to responsibility?"
The young man Zhao Yao, who was both a student of the school and a teacher's book boy, looked up and said without hesitation: "We Confucians believe in benevolence. The four words on the plaque are taken from 'when it comes to benevolence, do not yield to the teacher', which means that we scholars should respect teachers, but we don't need to be humble before benevolence, righteousness and morality."
Mr. Liu asked: "Don't be humble? How about changing it to 'can't'?"
The young man in blue shirt has a clean and elegant appearance, and compared with Ye Dan's aggressive and sharp temperament, his temperament is more gentle and restrained, just like a lotus in its infancy, naturally lovely. When the teacher asked this question with hidden meanings, the boy did not dare to take it lightly and carefully considered it. He felt that the teacher was examining his knowledge, so how could he dare to be casual? The middle-aged scholar looked at his disciple's reserved appearance as if facing a great enemy, smiled knowingly, and patted the boy on the shoulder, "It's just a casual question, don't be nervous. It seems that I have restrained your nature too much before, and made you live like a statue placed in Wenchang Pavilion, with a stern face, following rules everywhere, and reasoning in everything. It's not tiring... But it seems to be a good thing at the moment."
The young man was somewhat puzzled, but the teacher had already led him around to the other side. He still looked up at the four-character plaque. The scholar looked relaxed. For some reason, the serious teacher actually told a lot of interesting stories to his disciples: "The four-character plaque was written by the person who was the best calligrapher of the time. It caused a lot of controversy, such as the debate on the structure and spirit, and the debate on the praise and criticism of "ancient quality" and "modern beauty". Rhyme, method, meaning, posture , calligraphy four virtues, for thousands of years, this person has won the double champion, simply not giving his peers half a chance to live. As for the current "hope Word since Yes", it is a bit interesting. If you look closely, you should be able to find that although the four characters are similar in brushwork, structure, and spirit, they were actually written separately by four Taoist ancestors. At that time, two old immortals even exchanged letters and had a lot of arguments. They both wanted to write the mysterious "hope" character and were unwilling to write the vulgar "Word" character..."
Then the scholar told the boy, "Don't seek outside." He looked around with a dark look in his eyes. "The rural school where you study will soon be closed by several big families because there is no master, or simply demolished and built into a small Taoist temple or a Buddha statue for pilgrims to burn incense. Year after year, until the Jiazi period, there will be Taoists or monks presiding over it. During this period, there may be two or three "accidents" to avoid the suspicion of the people in the town. In fact, it is just a crude trick. However, if you complete a sesame-sized spell here, if it is placed outside, it may be equivalent to the grand momentum of immortals beating drums and spring thunder shaking the world..." At the end, the voice of the teacher was as thin as a mosquito, and the scholar Zhao Yao could not hear it clearly even if he pricked up his ears. Mr. Liu sighed, his tone somewhat helpless and tired: "Many things are originally secrets that cannot be told, and now they are becoming less and less important. But we are scholars after all, and we still have to give face. Besides, if I, Liu Chunshui, take the lead in breaking the rules, it would be equivalent to stealing public interests, which would be really too ugly."
Zhao Yao suddenly plucked up the courage and said: "Sir, I know you are not an ordinary person, and this town is not an ordinary place."
The scholar smiled curiously: "Oh? Tell me about it."
Zhao Yao pointed to the majestic twelve-legged archway, "Here, plus the iron lock well in Xinghua Lane, the covered bridge with two iron swords hanging under the bridge, the old locust tree, the peach tree in Taoye Lane, and Fulu Street where my Zhao family is located, the Guyuyi and Chongyangyi posted every year, etc., are all very strange."
Scholar Interrupting the young man, "Strange? Why is it strange? You grew up here and have never been out. Have you seen the scenery outside the town? Since there is no comparison, why do you say that?"
Zhao Yao said in a deep voice: "I have memorized the contents of those books of the teacher. The peach blossoms in Taoye Lane are very different from the descriptions in the poems and essays in the books. In addition, why did the teacher only teach three beginner books focusing on literacy? After the beginners, what books should we read? What is the purpose of reading? What is the 'Juye' in the book? What does it mean to be a farmer in the morning and enter the emperor's palace in the evening? What does 'The emperor values heroes and teaches you articles' mean? Although the two kiln supervisors never talked about the court, the capital and the world with others, but..."
The scholar smiled with relief and said, "Enough, there is no point in saying more."
Zhao Yao stopped talking immediately.
The Confucian scholar who called himself Liu Chunshui whispered: "Zhao Yao, you need to be careful with your words and deeds in the future. Remember that disaster comes from the mouth, so most Confucian sages keep their mouths shut. Gentlemen above sages are cautious and self-disciplined, fearing that there will be flaws. As for saints, such as the mountain owners of the 72 academies... These people can be like the Taoist great immortals and the Buddhist golden body arhats, with their words coming true and their words following the law. After reaching this realm, this group of people and the masters of the various schools of thought are generally called land immortals, which is considered to have one foot in the threshold. However, these people are all like dragons. Some are high above, like the statues in Taoist temples, unattainable, and some are like dragons that can only be seen from the head but not the tail, and ordinary people can't find them at all."
Zhao Yao was confused and felt like falling into clouds and fog.
Zhao Yao couldn't help asking, "Sir, why are you saying all this today?"
The scholar looked open-minded and smiled, "You have a teacher, so I naturally have one too. And my teacher... let's not talk about it. Anyway, I thought I could still survive for a few decades, but suddenly I found that some people behind the scenes were unwilling to wait even for this little while. So this time I can't take you out of the town, you need to go out by yourself. Some harmless truths should also be revealed to you, you just treat it as a story. I just hope you understand a truth, there are always people above you, no matter how 'blessed and lucky' you are, Zhao Yao, you can't be complacent and lazy."
The water level in the well dropped, and the leaves of the locust tree fell off the branches, which were all omens.
The scholar named Liu Chunshui reminded him, "Zhao Yao, do you remember the locust leaf I asked you to keep?"
The young scholar nodded vigorously, "Put it away with the seal given by the teacher."
"Where in the world can leaves be so green and fresh when they leave the branches? There are thousands of people in the town, but only a handful of people have received this "blessing". You can play with that locust leaf often, and there may be an opportunity in the future."
The scholar's eyes were deep, "In addition, over the years, I have always asked you to do good deeds and make good connections in the town. No matter who you are, you must treat each other with courtesy and sincerity. In the future, you will slowly understand the mystery. Those seemingly insignificant trivial things, dripping water through the stone, will eventually bring benefits that may not be worse than holding a copy of the "Local County Chronicles."
The young man found a yellow bird perched on the stone beam, occasionally jumping and chirping.
The scholar put his hands behind his back and looked up at the yellow bird with a solemn expression.
The young man could not see anything unusual.
The scholar Liu Chunshui suddenly looked towards Niping Lane, frowning even more.
The scholar sighed softly, "The hibernating insects gradually heard the sound of spring and broke out of the ground. But as a guest, sneaking around under the nose of the host and doing those sneaky tricks, isn't it too arrogant? Do you really think that you can do whatever you want here with a small bowl of water that you took on your own initiative?"
Zhao Yao was worried, "Sir?"
The scholar waved his hand, indicating that this matter had nothing to do with the young man, and just took him to the last plaque.
The young man Zhao Yao was like a hibernating insect that suddenly heard the sound of spring thunder. He suddenly stopped and his eyes were blank.
Not far away, there was a girl in black wearing a veil. The gauze covered her face. She had a well-proportioned figure, neither slender nor plump. She wore a long sword with a snow-white scabbard and a narrow knife with a green scabbard on her waist. She stood under the plaque of "Qi Chong Dou Niu", with her arms around her chest and her head raised.
The scholar felt funny and coughed softly.
The young man was just dumbfounded, and did not understand the teacher's reminder of "do not look at anything indecent".
The scholar smiled knowingly, but did not scold him. Instead, he stopped coughing and let the young man beside him stare at the girl.
The girl seemed to have never noticed the young man's gaze.
She seemed to appreciate the four characters "气冲斗牛" in particular. Compared with the solemnity of the other three regular script plaques, the characters on this plaque were written in running script, and the charm was almost arbitrary.
She liked it!
The young man suddenly woke up. It turned out that the teacher patted him on the shoulder and said with a smile: "Zhao Yao, you should go back to the school to move your things home."
The young man blushed, lowered his head, and followed the teacher back to the school.
The girl then slowly loosened her five fingers holding the handle of the knife.
In the distance, the scholar joked, "Zhao Yao, Zhao Yao, I saved your life."
The young man was shocked and said, "Sir?"
The scholar hesitated for a moment, and said seriously, "You must take a detour when you see her in the future."
The gentle and elegant scholar in blue shirt was a little surprised and a little disappointed, "Sir, why is that?"
Liu Chunshui thought about it and said a final statement, "She is extremely sharp and destined to be a sword without a sheath."
The young man hesitated to speak.
The middle-aged scholar smiled and said, "Of course, if you just like someone secretly, even the Taoist and Buddha can't stop you. Even we scholars who have the most rules and regulations, our great sage teacher, only warned us not to say, see, hear, or move anything inappropriate, but never said not to think anything inappropriate."
The young man suddenly seemed to be possessed by a ghost and blurted out loudly, "She smells so good!"
As soon as the words came out, the young man was stunned.
The scholar had a headache, not because he was angry, but because the situation was more difficult. He said in a deep voice, "Zhao Yao, turn around!"
The young man turned around subconsciously and turned his back to the teacher.
Under the archway, the girl turned her head, murderous.
She first let her hands hang down, and the thumbs of her two hands were pressed on the hilt of the sword and the handle of the knife respectively.
Then she started to run in small steps. After about four or five steps, she suddenly exerted force with her hands and feet. The three-foot-long sword in the snow-white scabbard and the slender narrow knife in the emerald green scabbard were first unsheathed and moved forward diagonally. At the same time, she bounced off the ground, quickly grasped the sword with both hands, and chopped it down without saying a word!
Between the black-clothed girl and the teacher and student in the town, two not-so-strong arms stretched and burst into two bright arcs.
It was definitely not a magical power, nor a magic.
It was just a word of speed!
The scholar looked relaxed, without any intention of dodging, but just stomped his feet lightly.
A ripple surged out.
The next moment, the girl's body tensed up, and her killing intent became stronger.
The sword and the knife that were so powerful that they broke through the bamboo completely missed, and she stood at the place where the sword and the knife were unsheathed.
The scholar smiled and said, "Yes, a lion will use all its strength to fight a rabbit. But then again, I, as a disciple, did offend the girl, but it's not a crime punishable by death, right?"
The girl deliberately made her voice mature and dull, slowly put the sword into the sheath, and changed to a one-handed knife-holding posture, pointing the tip of the knife directly at the scholar, "How you 'feel' is your business, I don't care."
The girl took a step forward, "What I do is my business. Of course, you can... control it!"
Rushing forward rapidly.
The ground where her front and back feet stepped on suddenly collapsed into two small pits.
The scholar put one hand behind his back and clenched his fist with the other hand, placing it in front of his abdomen, and smiled and said, "In the military martial arts, only speed can not be broken. It's a pity that even if this world is about to fall apart, as long as it is before that, even if ten land immortals join forces to break the formation, it is just like an ant trying to shake a tree. What's more, you?
The next moment, the girl appeared again for no reason a dozen steps to the left of the scholar.
She thought for a moment and closed her eyes.
The scholar shook his head and smiled, "It's not the trick you think it is. This world is similar to the so-called small world in Buddhism. Here, I am..."
"Huh?"
He suddenly cried out in surprise, and stopped talking. He came to the girl in an instant to find out what was going on, and gently held the tip of the knife with two fingers.
He asked, "Who taught you the knife and sword skills?"
The girl did not open her eyes. She held the hilt of the sword that had just been sheathed in her left hand. A cold light swept across the scholar's waist, trying to cut it off in half.
The scholar holding the tip of the knife with two fingers shouted, "Retreat!"
There was a rustling sound on the ground, and dust flew. After a while, the figure of a girl wearing a veil was revealed. She stood with her feet one in front of the other. There was a gully under her feet and in front of the scholar, as if it had been plowed out.
The girl's hands were bloody.
The knife was unsheathed, the sword was unsheathed, but she was reduced to being snatched away by someone with bare hands.
And she knew very well that in addition to the "structure" of this world, the enemy had always suppressed his strength and cultivation to the same level as her.
This was because he was not as skilled as others.
Rather than his cultivation.
She seemed to be on the verge of going berserk.
I'm afraid the girl herself didn't realize that the light around her was distorted.
The school teacher was the most reasonable person after all, and he advised her sympathetically: "You'd better not compare with me for the time being, it may hinder your martial arts state of mind. To reach the top of martial arts, it is crucial to proceed step by step."
He looked a little strange at this time, holding the tip of the sword in one hand and the sword body in the other hand.
He suddenly laughed, imitating the girl's tone, and said in a "mature" way: "It's your freedom to listen or not, and it's my business to speak or not."
The girl was silent for a moment, and said in a low voice: "I will teach you!"
The scholar smiled and nodded. She was not an arrogant woman who was always domineering. This was good. He gently threw the knife to the girl and said: "I'll give you the knife first."
He looked down at the long sword at his fingertips, which trembled slightly.
The voice of a young phoenix is clearer than that of an old phoenix.
The scholar lamented, "The quality of this sword is quite good, but it is still a little far from the top, so it can only bear the weight of two words at most, which is a bit of a stretch. Otherwise, with your talent and bones, not to mention taking all four words, three words would definitely be more than enough..."
As he sighed, he raised his hand and shouted, "Chi!"
Two dazzling lights flew out from the "Qi Chong Dou Niu" plaque.
The scholar waved his sleeves and slapped them into the long sword twice.
On the plaque, the words "Qi" and "Niu" still have momentum.
The words "Chong" and "Dou" are like an old man on a sickbed, who finally lost his vitality after a last burst of light.
The scholar shook his wrist carelessly, and the long sword returned to its owner's scabbard in the blink of an eye. Because it had been sheathed, no one knew for the time being that there were two auras wandering on the sword like a dragon.
The next scene shocked Liu Chunshui, who had experienced many vicissitudes of life.
The girl slowly took off the scabbard of the sword, threw it casually, and nailed it into the yellow earth ground at an angle. Behind the veil of the veil, her eyes were firm, "This is not the sword way I pursue."
The scholar glanced at the sword abandoned by the girl, and felt a long-lost heaviness in his heart. He had to ask a question that was not worthy of his identity: "Do you know who I am?"
The girl nodded and shook her head, "I heard that every sixty years, a saint from the three religions will come here to preside over the operation of a large formation. It has been thousands of years. From time to time, someone will go out from here, either with rare treasures or with rapid progress in cultivation, so I want to come and see. When I saw you, I was sure of your identity, otherwise I would not have acted so directly at that time."
Liu Chunshui asked again: "Then do you know what you just gave up?"
The girl was silent.
The long sword in the scabbard on the ground trembled constantly, like a beautiful woman whimpering and begging her lover to change his mind.
The young scholar had already turned his head secretly and looked at the girl in the distance cautiously.
The scholar was knowledgeable, but he still couldn't figure it out. It was not good to force the long sword with great luck on the girl. Finally, he had to remind her: "Girl, you'd better put away the sword. From now on, the town will be very...unpeaceful. It's a good thing to have one more thing to protect yourself."
The girl didn't say anything and turned away.
She still didn't want to take the sword.
Liu Chunshui was somewhat helpless. He waved his sleeves and nailed the sword into a stone pillar of the memorial archway. If someone forcibly pulled it out, it would certainly disturb him who was in charge of the center, just like the "storyteller" before, one bright and one dark, and both times he made a move, he did not escape the attention of the teacher of the school.
He personally sent Zhao Yao all the way from the school to the Zhao family mansion on Fulu Street. The middle-aged scholar walked slowly. Every time he took a step, the tall houses with dense courtyards on both sides of the street, some hidden places, would have some imperceptible streams of light and color, flashing by.
Liu Chunshui murmured: "Strange, where did the little girl come from? Could it be a fairy from outside this continent?"
After he returned to the school, he sat in front of the desk, placing a jade sceptre, about one foot and two inches long, with four towns carved on the four corners, implying the stability of the four directions, and densely packed small seal inscriptions on the front, no less than a hundred words.
According to the Confucian ritual system, only the emperor of a country could hold the jade scepter.
This shows the significance of this town.
Turning it over, there are only two words engraved on the back of the jade scepter.
The handwriting is rigorous and unique.
The muscles and bones are extremely strong, and the spirit is extremely long.
On the desk, there is also a secret letter that has just arrived.
The Confucian scholar with white temples has red eyes, "Sir, I am incompetent and can only watch you being humiliated to this point..."
The Confucian scholar looked out the window, without too much sadness or joy, but a little lonely, "Liu Chunshui is ashamed of his teacher, and he has lived for a hundred years, but only owes one death."
————
When Ye Dan took something out of the inner room and put it on the table, Fu Nanhua could not hide the ecstasy on his face no matter how he tried to hide it.
An inconspicuous little pot, with the signature "Mandrill" on the bottom of the pot.
Ye Dan placed his hands on the table, leaned forward, and asked with a smile: "How much is this pot worth?"
The young city lord of Laolong City finally took his eyes off the small pot, looked up and said frankly: "If it is sold in the secular dynasty, it is not worth even one or two taels of silver. But if it is sold by me, I can buy back a city."
Ye Dan asked: "How many tens of thousands of people?"
Fu Nanhua stretched out three fingers.
Ye Dan said, "Oh, it turned out to be 300,000."
Fu Nanhua was stunned and laughed.
He originally thought that Ye Dan would say 30,000 people.
————
Over in Xinghua Lane, a dull man squatted beside the iron lock well, staring at the iron chain tied to the base of the wheelbarrow.
He seemed to be struggling with how to move it.
————
The girl in black clothes and veil, with a cold temperament, walked around the town aimlessly, with only the green sheathed narrow knife hanging on her body, and her hands were just bandaged with cloth strips.
When she just walked into an unknown alley.
With a whoosh, something broke through the air and stopped behind the girl, buzzing.
The girl frowned, without turning her head, and a word jumped out from her teeth, "Get lost!"
Another whoosh.
The "flying sword" that had come here out of the sheath was so scared that it really hid back in the scabbard.
Proud girl.
Well-behaved flying sword.