Chapter 239: [Dragon Blood Mountain] With Heart

Mo Ran listened hollowly and woodenly.

He had stopped shouting, he sat where he was, his eyes straight, staring ahead.

"Everything was going well, but for a while the Lower Fairy World was so badly divided that it was overflowing with stragglers and starving people."

It was early winter, with snow falling in the leaden grey sky, and a mountain road slowly appeared in front of Mo Ran, covered in a layer of white frost, fresh snow, and crisscrossed with carriage marks.

"I didn't expect that one day, on my way back from a trip to the foot of the mountain with him to take some spiritual stones, we would meet a child who was dying of hunger."

Mo Ran still looks on numbly.

Chu Wanning and Huai Zui appear on the trail, Chu Wanning with a Lou basket on his back containing raw spiritual stones and a cotton cloak, walking next to Huai Zui.

"Master." Suddenly, Chu Wanning stopped in his tracks and turned his head to look down the grassy slope, "There's someone there."

"Go and see."

Chu Wanning's long, white fingers plucked away the grass, and he was startled, opening his phoenix eyes slightly: "It's a child."

He immediately turned around and said to Huai Zui, "Master, come quickly, take a look at him, what is wrong with him"

What's going on?

Huai Zui is also good, Mo Ran is also good, both can be seen at a glance.

The child was dirty and smelly, dressed in rags and thin clothes that must have been taken off and never put on again, with holes in them. To put it mildly, the dogs in the temple, eating scraps of food, were living in more glory than this child.

If the child had not been moaning and breathing, it would have been no different from a puddle of rotten flesh.

What else could be wrong.

In the face of every catastrophe, manpower is so meagre and small that it is not uncommon for a child to die, let alone be replaced by a child.

Only Chu Wanning, who grew up in a temple, could ask such a stupid question in a daze.

Huai Zui frowned and said, "Leave it and go back first. I'll take a look at him."

Chu Wanning trusted his master, so he immediately obeyed and got up, but before he could go, the hem of his cloak was tugged by a small, dirty hand.

The hand was so feeble that the tug was so small that it was like a small puppy scratching gently.

Chu Wanning lowered his head to a small, dirty face whose features were indistinguishable.

The boy's voice was as soft as a mosquito's, as if another snowflake falling from the sky could roll him to death and crush him.

"Rice"

Chu Wanning was stunned for a moment, not responding, "What"

"Rice," the boy whimpered, his face all black, with only two remaining whites in his eyes, and he made a shaky gesture of picking up rice, mournfully, "Eat."

Outside the scroll, Mo Ran blinks halfway back to her senses.

But his mind was still numb, and he was unable to react quickly enough, except for a vague sense that the scene seemed familiar, as if he had seen it somewhere before.

He looked straight on.

Inside the scroll, Chu Wanning has frozen in his tracks.

His eyes widened in horror, and when he finally understood what he was saying, he was at first bewildered and incredulous, and then frazzled and anxious.

He had only known the goodness of the earthly winds and the moon, but had never seen a child so thin that only skin remained, like a kitten or puppy dying of hunger, cowering in the grass on a snowy day, the only thing on him to keep out the cold was a rag that was too cool to wear in summer. Tugging at him, only two words came out of his mouth.

Meals, and eating.

Huai Zui said sternly, "You go back first."

But this time Chu Wanning didn't listen any more. He looked at the little dirty dog-like child and was so distressed that he took off his own cloak and wrapped it around the child.

His heart was burning with anxiety, as if it was not the child who was suffering, but he himself, and he said, "Hungry? Wait, I have rice porridge here, I have rice porridge."

He went to ask Huai Zui to take it, but Huai Zui frowned.

"I told you to go back, it's not your business."

"Why shouldn't we care?" Chu Wanning was bewildered, "He he's so pathetic, Master, do you see he's just trying to beg for food, he'll starve and freeze to death if he keeps this up."

As he spoke, he was a little baffled himself as he muttered, "What's going on here? Didn't they say the world was clear and calm? Why would"

"Go back."

Chu Wanning was stunned, not knowing why Huai Zui would suddenly do this, but finally biting his lip, he said, "I want to feed him some rice soup."

"I couldn't resist, so I gave him my permission." Huai Zui's hollow voice, with a sigh, drifted to Mo Ran's ears, along with a blanket of wind-blown snow, "I gave him the jug of rice soup and allowed him to save the untimely child himself. I didn't know then what it would make Chu Wanning feel and what choices it would make for him. I didn't know anything at that time."

Mo Ran watched in awe as Chu Wanning opened the capsule and brought it up to the child's mouth.

The child pushes forward hungrily, but can't suck.

He was on the verge of starvation and did not have the slightest spare energy.

Mo Ran's throat twitches.

He suddenly felt a seed sprouting inside his skull and arching out of the mud layer.

Suddenly he felt that all this was so familiar before him

He looked on.

He was looking back.

And then, at a certain point, the dragon broke the waves and the clouds and water rolled in.

He stood up abruptly, his fingers balled into fists

He remembered

"It's you" he hurried towards Chu Wanning in the scroll, his pupils contracting sharply, "You're him it's him you surprisingly you surprisingly"

He couldn't go on, and he leapt over and covered his eyes with his arm.

The throat is as miserable as it can be.

How he didn't expect it.

Surprisingly, it was Chu Wanning.

The child who was freezing to death in the haystack was the one who, after burying his mother, had crawled down from the mass grave and had nowhere to return to, begging for money.

Visions overlap with memories, and Mo Ran never forgets the young man who, on a snowy day, took off his cloak and wrapped it around himself.

Chu Wanning asked worriedly, "What's wrong? Can't you drink?"

Little Mo Ran could say no more than a faint whimper from her throat and narrowed her dark eyes as she looked at him breathlessly.

"Then I'll pour it out for you, don't mind."

The spout of the pot unscrewed and the rice porridge was scooped up in the young man's palm, which he carefully held over, looking a little hesitant, probably because he thought it was a little dirty and perhaps the boy wouldn't want to drink it.

But he was overthinking it after all.

Dirty

On the way from Linyi to the Temple of No Mercy, Mo Ran drank river water, rainwater and muddy puddles. He ate wild fruits, leftover food and, at his most helpless, even swallowed earthworms, licked ants and ate mud.

He prostrated himself on the ground and went over to drink the rice soup. At that time, he felt that what passed through his throat was the sweet dew of Yang Zhi, and that the person who held the soup to him was an exiled immortal from the nine heavens.

"Slowly, slowly, there's not enough left." Chu Wanning was surprised and saddened again as he looked at the filthy little head buried between his hands, miserable and wretched, greedily and pitifully licking the rice porridge, tongue curling like a small animal's when it drinks water.

"Where did you come from?" he asked.

But Mo Ran whimpered and didn't answer, and when the rice milk was finished, only a little remained in the crevice of his palm, and he wouldn't let it go, licking the palm of this little brother's hand endlessly, tickling and hurting Chu Wanning.

The itch is in the hands, the pain is in the heart.

"It's okay, there's more, I'll pour you some more."

Chu Wanning then scooped up another handful, which Mo Ran watched with bated breath, and when his hand came up, he went back to it, lapping it up impatiently.

Chu Wanning crouched down and fed him from the jug full of rice milk.

Mo Ran never forgets.

In fact, he had thought countless times later in his tumultuous life about what would have happened to him if he had not met this person at that time.

He had pushed through many possibilities, had many visions, but in the end he could not escape one word.

Death.

They die of hunger, freeze to death, are carried off by wolves and dogs, and have their hearts, livers, spleens and stomachs ripped open.

If I hadn't met this brother, I would have gone to meet my mother under the Yellow Springs long ago.

So when Mo Ran became Fairy Tramper, he went back to Temple of No Mercy to look for his old benefactor, but so much time had passed that he couldn't remember his benefactor's face, and he was so annoyed by the shiny bald heads in the courtyard that he just waved his hand and left.

At that time, the abbot was terrified, not knowing what Temple of No Mercy had done to offend Fairy Tramper, and was waiting anxiously for his judgment. The next day, the emperor ordered hundreds of boxes to be brought to him, and when they were opened, they were full of gold.

"His Majesty did not know who the deceased was, so he rewarded each of the monks of Temple of No Mercy with ten thousand pieces of gold in return for their lives."

So the benefactor, whom he had gone round and round but could not find, was then trapped at the top of death and life, under his house arrest and bullied by him all day?

In the old days of the stranger, that little brother removed the warm cloak wrapped around his skinny body.

But as fate would have it, he ripped off his little brother's clothes every night and held him down between the dreary tents of his bed, turning him upside down.

He went all over the world on one side to find his benefactor.

On the one hand, without knowing anything, she forced her benefactor to kneel between her legs, humiliated in a hundred ways and bent her head.

Mo Ran looked at the scene in front of her, blood filling her eyes a little.

"How? How could it be you?"

This life, these two lives. Fate is deep to meet you, but fate is shallow to miss you.

It's all about life.

Everything in front of us is dark again, except for the incessant sound of the wind and snow, and Huai Zui's empty, silent voice, which echoes in the distance.

"I asked the boy if he wanted to stay at the Temple of No Mercy, but the boy said that he had to return to Xiangtan to repay a favour for his mother, so he had to go back to Xiangtan first, no matter what. I couldn't let him stay, so I gave him dry food and some silver." Huai Zui said, "As the boy staggered down the snowy slope, Wangning stood watching until his back was completely swallowed by the wind and snow and he disappeared into the wilderness before he turned back to the temple. I went to take his hand, and I remember his hand then, cold as ice."

He was quiet for a moment, but the pain in his voice remained unsuppressed.

"After that day, Wangning mentioned to me several times that he wanted to go down to the mountain to support the Way, but I did not allow him to do so. I even accused him of having an unstable mind, and that a stubborn stone in the water had moved his Zen mind. So I sent him to Dragon Blood Mountain to face the wall for a hundred and sixty-four days."

"At first he asked me to let him out, but then, about as disappointed as he was, he would never say another word. Every day, for 164 days, I asked him what he had learned, and every day I hoped to change his attitude, but the answer he gave me was always two words." Huai Zui let out a long sigh, as empty and silent as snow.

"Entering the world."

He was willing to fall into misery because he saw a child suffering once.

"Later, he set fire to the scriptures I had with him and rebelled against rejuvenation. I was worried that this was not the way to go, so I ended his house arrest, and I planned to talk to him in some other way, so that when he had survived another year and his spirit core was stable, I could take him to the ghost world and it would all be over."

"What I didn't expect was that Chu Wanning would leave without saying goodbye on the night he finished his meditation. The letter said that although he had been gone for a long time, he still felt tormented every time he thought of the child he had met earlier, so he wanted to go down to the mountain for ten days, and that he was afraid I would lock him up again, so he left at night. I was holding that letter, annoyed and agitated, but there was nothing I could do."

Huai Zui sighed, "I don't even know where he went."

A new scene lights up again.

This time it was at the Temple of No Mercy, in the courtyard.

Chu Wanning has returned, covered in dirt and blood, but his eyes are bright and shining in the moonlight.

At this moment, he is like a divine weapon that has been forged for a long time and has finally been sheathed, and no one can stop him.

Huai Zui stood in front of him and neither of them spoke.

But Huai Zui's voice in Mo Ran's ears continued slowly: "Ten days later, he did return on time. I was relieved, glad that nothing had changed, and planned to reprimand him and send him back to his room to get some rest. But what I didn't expect was an unsheathed sword."

The image shows Chu Wanning kneeling down and making a long bow to the ground.

Huai Zui frowned slightly: "What is this?"

"Your Holiness may have avoided the world for a long time, but nowadays the outside world is really different from what your Holiness said. I implore you, Master, not to stay in the mountain any longer, but to go down and see how this world is an endless sea of suffering, it is no longer the Peach Blossom Yard of which you speak."

Huai Zui suddenly became angry: "Ridiculous! You know what you're talking about!"

Chu Wanning thought that by telling the truth he had seen with his own eyes and ears, he would be able to change his master's closed-minded attitude. He did not expect this reaction from Huai Zui, so he was stunned for a moment before he said, "Master has always told me to worry about the worries of others and to face the difficulties of others. In the past ten days, I have visited twenty-three villages in Upper Lower Fairy World, and what I have seen is shocking.

Before he could finish his sentence, he was angrily interrupted by Huai Zui: "Who told you to leave the mountain without permission"

"There is no sun or moon in this mountain, so you should soon attain the righteousness and ascend to heaven.

"The suffering of the world goes on from generation to generation, and it is not for you, a small cultivator, to manage it.

Huai Zui's anger grows as he speaks, and Chu Wanning's eyes widen.

He watched as his master paced in the moonlight, flicking his sleeve, nudging him on the tip of his nose and scolding him so loudly that the begonia trees cast a heavy shadow that cut Huai Zui into pieces. Mo Ran watched Chu Wanning's face change from bewilderment to bewilderment, then to shock, then to disappointment, and finally to pain.

Chu Wanning closes his eyes.

Huai Zui said angrily, "You know you are wrong."

""

"Say something."

"Disciple." Chu Wanning paused, his voice hard as iron, "I don't know."

Huai Zui slapped down: "You are reckless"

Chu Wanning's cheeks immediately flushed, but he immediately turned his face back with a look of disbelief and indignation in his eyes, "Master, all these years you have taught me to behave properly and to worry about the world, but why do you want me to stand by and do nothing when there is a great calamity?"

"This is not the same thing at all." Huai Zui gritted his teeth and said, "What can you do if you leave the mountain at this moment? You are indeed outstandingly gifted, but the world is not at all dangerous for you to imagine, and you are going out, for what? To live up to the kindness of my master for fourteen years, to donate your body to a difficult situation in order to be impetuous"

He paused, his words resounding, gold and stone falling to the ground.

"Chu Wanning, if you can't cross yourself, how can you cross others?"

And Chu Wanning, at that very moment, looked at his mentor with anger and sadness.

He lifted his chin slightly, and his phoenix eyes gradually became misty with moisture.

Huai Zui had probably never seen Chu Wanning in tears before, and the light under his eyes somewhat quenched the fire in his heart, and he was stunned for a moment and hesitantly said, "You... It's just that I hurt you just now."

But Mo Ran, on the sidelines, knew that it wasn't.

Chu Wanning was not hurt by the slap, he was hurt by the fact that his teacher, whom he had respected since he was a child, would say something that did not fit his image of being a noble man.

Chu Wanning slowly closed his eyes, and after a few moments, Mo Ran heard the all-too-familiar words.

He said, "If you don't know how to measure people, how can you measure yourself?"

Huai Zui is frozen in place, his form as if he were a motionless wooden statue in a Buddhist shrine.

Chu Wanning's voice was slightly hoarse: "The suffering of the mortal world is right in front of my eyes, and I am sorry that I do not know why the Master is sitting high up in the sky with his eyes closed."

He finished and rose slowly.

In the moonlight, the crown of his clothes had long since ceased to be white when he went, and there was sludge and blood.

But it is as upright and dignified as it is imposing.

"This immortality, it's better not to cultivate it."

Huai Zui's mind was dizzy with rage and he said in a stern voice, "Rebel, you know what you are talking about."

"I just want to do what you taught me as a child." Chu Wanning was also at sword point, but between openings and relaxations, he trembled slightly, his eyes full of sadness, "You taught me that, is your moral righteousness only on paper is it that millions of victims are homeless, orphans are dying day and night, and what I should do is not to go out to the mountains to help the Tao, but to accompany the ancient Buddha with his green lamp and practice Zen Buddhism"

Huai Zui shouted, his eyes wide with anger: "After your ascension, you will be able to do many good deeds."

Chu Wanning stared at him as if he had never seen the man before.

His chest rose and fell, his palms balled into fists, and his eyes were so full of water that Mo Ran thought he was going to rise up the next moment like a dragon breaking through the water and sending a huge wave down Huai Zui's throat to make him know his mistake.

But Chu Wanning shuddered for a moment, and then did nothing.

His eyes ended up thinly red and he said hoarsely, "Master, I am Xianxia, not for the sake of being free and transcending the red world. Is Xianxia only about becoming an immortal? If so, I would rather not. I'd rather stop halfway, I'd rather achieve nothing, I'd rather stay on earth."

"Give all I have and die with all my strength."

""

"Ascend, Master, and when I have finished crossing all those I can, I will come and follow you."

" Chu Wanning "

Even though it was a vision, Mo Ran could feel Huai Zui's overwhelming anger, the hidden trepidation in his heart and his bitter disappointment.

What is this wooden statue that dares to turn its back on the one who gave it its life?

Huai Zui's eyes are red and blood is hidden underneath them.

He was resentful, he was furious, he was angry, he had bitterness and secrets to tell

He had nowhere to vent his anger.

Finally he called out to Chu Wanning, who was about to step out of the courtyard door, his voice cold to the core: "Stop right there, rebel."