Translator: Dj22031
Editor: Dj22031
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He Zun came back the next day and led his classmates to Baoyang Temple.
His classmates blushed in confusion when they saw Xie Lingya, including the boys. The main reason was that they had never been willing to come here with He Zun before, and they had never had tea together. They were all confused last night. So, they felt a little embarrassed after arriving today, and they were also very surprised to see Xie Lingya himself.
Hearing Xie Lingya’s voice last night made them feel very comfortable and left a very deep impression. Now that they saw Xie Lingya in person, who was so young, it was inevitable that their heart would surge.
Xie Lingya had already prepared green wood incense and other incense to boil incense water. When they arrived, he asked them to use the water to wipe their bodies and eliminate their filth. After all, they had hit something unclean yesterday.
The several students had dark circles on their faces. They basically didn’t dare to sleep in the hotel last night, and they didn’t dare to take off their mirrors.
“The security guard almost called the police yesterday, thinking we were robbed.” He Zun said depressedly.
Another classmate said faintly: “He almost wanted to hit you. You pointed your middle finger at him for ten minutes.”
He Zun: “…Didn’t I have cramps!”
If you don’t open it, you almost smile and lose all your dignity.
He Zun said depressedly: “It’s all thanks to my Lingguan Jue, otherwise the phone call wouldn’t be able to get through. Teacher Xie, when we went to the hotel later, the front desk said that their phone number had not changed, and they did not receive our call in the meantime. We tried again on the spot, by the way, and found that the phone call could be connected again.”
Xie Lingya had thought of it earlier and said, “Just think of it as more practice. You still have to be careful, especially at night. Otherwise, if it’s a more powerful guy next time, what should you do if you can’t even make a call?”
He Zun’s hair stood on end as he imagined it, and he nodded in agreement.
These students took turns to rub their bodies with the incense water in the room. After coming out, they didn’t know if it was a psychological effect, but they felt refreshed.
He Zun took them to burn incense for the ancestor, and then drink tea in the front yard. Xie Lingya told him to wait as he had prepared an amulet for him.
After He Zun’s classmates sat down, they were more relaxed than before and began to discuss:
“I didn’t expect this place to be quite beautiful. It has a very periodic atmosphere. There are many people coming to take pictures.”
“I think the last thing I expected was… Teacher Xie…!”
“Aigoo, that’s right, He Zun, if you had told me Teacher Xie was so handsome, we would’ve come to see him a long time ago!”
The female classmate still blamed He Zun.
He Zun: “…Do you think I didn’t want to? Last time I told the girls in our class that Teacher Xie and the Taoist priest here are very handsome, and they called me gay!”
Everyone: “…”
Xie Lingya also came out at that time, holding a few newly drawn talismans in his hand, which he folded and put into a rubber sleeve. This rubber sleeve was new. Now they were not so poor, and so the packaging of talismans had also improved.
“Don’t lose it this time, take two as spares.” Xie Lingya gave He Zun one more piece.
He Zun hurriedly said: “It’s so touching, thank you, Teacher.”
He Zun’s fortune this year was really low. He saw ghosts again and again. He carefully put the talisman away and complained to himself: “If I lose this again, I might lose it in the future. I don’t want to go to the provincial capital anymore. I can sell my house and buy one here nearby, so that Teacher Xie can protect me.”
Xie Lingya raised his eyes and looked at him, “Then why don’t you donate a gold body to the Patriarch, so that you can travel all over the world and not be afraid.”
He Zun: “…”
His classmates also burst into laughter, “That’s right, just donate money!”
He Zun vowed: “When I start working in the future, I will make a lot of money. Thank you, teacher, for waiting.”
Xie Lingya thought to himself, maybe it would be better for me to make money myself as it would be faster.
….
A few weeks later, He Zun came to Baoyang Temple again. It wasn’t that he got rich, but that he neglected one thing.
“Both of my hands hurt!” He Zun cried sadly, holding up both hands, “One’s middle finger is broken, and the other’s head was twisted and cramped for a long time. I was so excited that day, so busy asking for talismans, that I forgot to ask Teacher Xie to help me take a look again.”
Everyone in Baoyang Temple stared at him, “What happened next?”
He Zun sat on a stool with his legs crossed and said in a desperate tone: “I have a few elective courses that had their mid-term exams this week. I originally thought it would be enough to ask my classmates to help, but the invigilator suddenly became very strict for no reason. I didn’t finish two papers…”
Everyone: “…”
He Zun hugged the table and howled: “I reviewed it. I reviewed it! Otherwise, how could I dare to go out for a trip!”
As a result, the trip went too far and the car overturned.
“Actually, I originally wanted to ask for leave from the teacher and postpone it so that I can take the exam alone later. But the teacher actually didn’t believe that my hands were sore due to cramps. He suspected that my hands were sore from playing games and said that it would be the same if I took the make-up exam next semester.” He Zun’s eyes were like death. He asked, “Teacher Xie, whoever made the promise will win the day?”
Everyone looked at He Zun with pity. Xie Lingya said gently: “You see, you should be more sincere in your life. Why does the teacher suspect that you were just playing games? It’s because your grades are still there. If you hadn’t come out, didn’t you only have two papers to finish? Maybe you would only fail two subjects and save one?”
He Zun: “…”
Hai Guanchao said thoughtfully: “This is fate. Ah.”
He Zun knew that he would fail the exam, so he crammed hard, and then he went out to relax when he thought he was done reviewing. As a result, his hands cramped when he relaxed, which caused him to fail the exam. This kind of thing was really impossible to say.
….
There were no rest days in Taoist temples and clinics, and they were even busier than usual on rest days.
On the weekend, Zhang Daoting was receiving believers and Hai Guanchao was also in the clinic. And Xie Lingya was going out to buy fragrant flowers and fruits to offer to each of the statues, so he very kindly invited Shi Changxuan to go with him.
Shi Changxuan accompanied Xie Lingya out without saying a word.
The two of them walked to the market a few streets away to buy incense and flowers. They just bought the fruits at the market behind them. When they came back, they passed a park where many old people were exercising.
There were several fortune tellers and divination stalls on the roadside, and all of them were dressed more seriously than Shi Changxuan, a serious Taoist priest.
Xie Lingya just looked at it curiously. One of the fortune tellers might have thought there was business to be done, so he raised his voice and said, “Little brother, why don’t you come and I’ll calculate what you want?”
Xie Lingya looked to the side and said, “I, huh?”
The fortune teller nodded, “Of course it’s you, you know it in your heart.”
What do I know, but what you don’t know is that one of us works in a Taoist temple and the other preaches Taoism at home. However, Xie Lingya still took two steps forward, squatted down and said, “Did you just say that I have something to ask for?”
Shi Changxuan stood aside, watching indifferently.
The fortune teller looked at Xie Lingya and smiled, “If I’m not wrong, what you are asking for is related to someone.”
Xie Lingya glanced at Shi Changxuan quietly and said, “Yes, that’s right.”
There were also many strange people among the people, it didn’t mean that you must be incapable if you’re running a street stall. Of course, Xie Lingya nodded and didn’t believe it immediately, but became interested in listening.
The fortune teller pulled out two benches from behind and said, “Haha, you two sit down and listen.”
Xie Lingya sat down generously and found that Shi Changxuan was still standing. He looked sideways and said, “Shi Dao…ah, Changxuan, you should sit down too.”
Shi Changxuan: “…”
After a while, he sat down with some difficulty.
Xie Lingya lowered his head to look at the Liu Ren plate[1] on the fortune teller’s stall, and said with a smile: “Sir, are you counting Liu Ren? Then give me a lesson?”
The fortune teller looked at his familiar look, as if he still knew a little about Liu Ren, rolled his eyes and said: “Why use the Liuren Pan, when I can draw a Shennong hexagram for you?”
Shennong hexagram? He had never heard of this before. Xie Lingya looked at him curiously.
The fortune teller took out a bamboo tube and a small bag of rice from the box on the side, and then used the bamboo tube to repeatedly measure the rice.
Xie Lingya looked for a while but couldn’t figure out the way, so he looked at Shi Changxuan.
Shi Changxuan was staring into the distance, but when Xie Lingya looked over, he asked, “…Sir, are you from the southwest?”
The fortune teller froze, raised his head and said, “How do you know? I don’t have an accent, right?” It’s not just that he didn’t have a southwest accent. But after staying in Qiyang for so long, he even had a Qiyang accent.
Shi Changxuan stared at the rice in his hand and said calmly: “Diagram of rice…”
The fortune teller immediately knew that he had met someone knowledgeable. There were so many fortune telling methods, such as Qi Men Dun Jia, Liu Ren, Zi Wei Dou Shu, etc. These were just something that ordinary people were familiar with.
There were more divination methods among the people, from ancient oracle bone divination to cups commonly used in Taoist temples, star divination, dream divination, divination, asking gods to possess people for divination, using human physiological phenomena for divination, using natural climate for divination… there were so many.
And every place had its own characteristics. From the fortune teller’s divination techniques, Shi Changxuan could tell his origin. Either he himself came from the southwest, or he also learned this skill from the southwest people.
“I’m sorry.” the fortune teller said repeatedly. He didn’t think that this person just knew the origin of the rice divination.
Shi Changxuan shook his head, it didn’t matter.
Xie Lingya asked, “Sir, can I still get my fortune read?”
The fortune teller blushed and said, “I dare not.”
He knew how much he could do, and his conversations and questions with Xie Lingya were all clichés, and Xie Lingya could answer whatever he wanted. But nine times out of ten, Xie Lingya would feel that what he said made sense. But it would be a bit against the rules to defraud money in front of an expert.
Xie Lingya was slightly disappointed. It seemed that people with real abilities were not everywhere.
The two of them stood up and nodded to the fortune teller and left. On the way, Xie Lingya asked Shi Changxuan: “Master Shi, do you know Liu Ren?”
Shi Changxuan shook his head, “I use material sentiment as my fortune teller.”
This was a very mysterious divination method. Many Taoist priests knew the five skills of fortune-telling and divination, but they may not necessarily be proficient in them. However, there was a large category of fortune telling, which was to use the situation of things to predict. It included thousands of things, such as birds singing or being frightened, tigers and wolves coming out of their cages, and withered grass coming back to life, it could all be used for divination.
When Shi Changxuan said this, it didn’t sound like he knew one of them, but it sounded more like he could pick up any plant and tree at his fingertips and divine things.
Xie Lingya asked: “Then look at these willow trees, can you divine something?”
Shi Changxuan glanced at the willow trees next to him. They were planted in the park and lined up along the roadside. He looked at them for a while and said casually: “I would have to go into the mountains tonight to have something good.”
Was it that simple? You can’t understand anything from this!
Xie Lingya immediately said: “Then for verification, I will accompany you into the mountains tonight, but I have to ask clearly what is a good thing. Picking up five yuan on the side of the road is not a good thing!”
“…” Shi Changxuan was speechless.
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[1] Da Liu Ren is a form of Chinese calendrical astrology dating from the later Warring States period. It is also a member of the Three Styles of divination, along with Qi Men Dun Jia and Taiyi.