Chapter 1381 Our Past
This sentence caused many tea guests to roar with laughter. Everyone shook their heads and felt proud, as if it was their great honor to beat back the court tax collector.
While laughing, they gave Li Yao a look of "caring for mentally handicapped children".
Li Yao has thousands of words in his stomach, and he wants to talk to these ordinary people who are chronically malnourished, black and thin, covered with scabies, described as wretched, and are completely different species from cultivators.
However, under their staring eyes, my thoughts went around for a long time, and I finally didn't know how to start.
After leaving the tea shop, under the guidance of the teacher, he went to visit the local temple which is said to be extremely fragrant.
Along the Wujiang River, there is a lot of divine power and strong incense. There are many temples, Taoist temples and ancestral halls in various towns and villages, even in deep mountains and dense forests.
However, most of these theocracy incense places enshrine not illusory gods and Buddhas, but local sects, cultivators who sacrificed heroically in the action of killing demons and demons.
It is said that after the fall of a cultivator, a trace of heroic spirit will not die, as long as he is offered incense and offerings, he will still protect the environment and the people, and protect the safety of one side.
Therefore, after the death of the cultivators of Shiwumen, if their cultivation base and status are extremely high, they will build their own temples, even if they are low-level monks with low strength, they will also be assigned to various ancestral halls, forever Enjoy incense offerings.
Every village and every village here has more than one temple or ancestral hall, which is often the tallest and grandest building in the village. The blue bricks and tiles, stone lions and bronze gates are in stark contrast to the low and dilapidated mud huts nearby.
Every temple or ancestral hall enshrines the heroic spirits of three or five cultivators.
This is the most in-demand item. Every time a cultivator in Shiwumen falls, it will attract competition from all the villages and towns in ten miles and eight towns. Everyone offers the most lucrative conditions, hoping to attract the heroic spirit to their villages and towns.
The number of enshrined heroic spirits is a symbol of the strength of a village!
In this temple that Li Yao visited, a total of four cultivators were enshrined, including an elder and a head of the Shiwumen. It is called the "Four Sacred Temple", and it is said to be the largest in ten miles and eight villages. Temple, no wonder the villagers say that this place is full of incense, which is extremely effective.
In the Temple of the Four Sages, there are clay idols of four cultivators, covered with gold powder, and engraved in the dark with several colorful talisman arrays that stimulate glare, which is somewhat fairy-like and lifelike. When the villagers saw it, it was not surprising that they regarded it as a heroic spirit.
There are also a few bronze medals, but they are engraved with the deeds of these cultivators, especially the reasons for their fall.
Li Yao took a closer look, and found that the three cultivators all fell while fighting fierce beasts in the mountains and forests. The head of the peak realm of the foundation establishment period was chasing a powerful evil cultivator who fled to the local area. Killed by the opponent.
Li Yao didn't know what to say about these debacles.
It is obviously impossible for a cultivating sect to live only on the rent and tax of ten miles and eight villages. If you want to practice, you mainly have to go to the deep mountains and old forests to hunt down spirit beasts and monsters, obtain their flesh and blood, spirit pills, and demon pills, and then dig out various treasures. Planting natural materials, earth treasures and spar spirit mines is the foundation of a sect.
Therefore, Shi Wumen's entry into the mountains to "slay demons and eliminate demons" is the need for the survival and development of the sect, and it is not purely "doing justice for the sky".
But from an objective point of view, it is true that these cultivators have fought for living space with monsters, ghosts, wolves, tigers and leopards without fear of sacrifice for hundreds of years, and only then have they opened up a land where ordinary people can barely survive.
When demons and tigers and wolves wreak havoc down the mountain, or when evil cultivators from other places came in, the "immortal masters" of Shiwumen were not ambiguous.
Therefore, if one were to ask whether the cultivators of Shiwumen had contributed to the ordinary people here, Li Yao couldn't help but say "no" shyly.
"A cultivator of Shiwumen is arrogant, bossy, and dismissive of the common people today. It looks extremely hateful."
"But maybe tomorrow he will go into the mountain to fight with monsters, and unfortunately he will fall!"
"Subjectively, he is of course purely for his own cultivation, just to collect demon pills, animal bones and various elixir, without considering the interests of the common people at all; but objectively, he gave his life for the sake of protecting the environment and the people. , Make a small contribution!"
"Such a Guxiu, is he considered a good person or a bad person?"
For a moment, Li Yao couldn't think of an answer to this question.
What's more, did this Gu Xiu really not consider the interests of the common people at all?
Most of Shiwumen's cultivators come from ten miles and eight villages, and they are native people.
Many cultivators' eighty-year-old mothers and three-year-old children are ordinary people, and they all live here.
Once the ferocious beasts and demons really come down the mountain in groups to wreak havoc, the families of these cultivators will also suffer disaster.
When these cultivators were killing demons in the mountains and forests, did they really only consider their own interests, without any feeling of "defending their hometown"?
People are not plants, so how can they be ruthless? How can we use the simple words "right or wrong, good or bad" to judge the affairs of the world!
Li Yao secretly sighed, hesitated for a long time, and finally, as a modern cultivator, he bowed deeply to the four ancient cultivators represented by the four clay idols, and called out respectfully in his heart. One voice: "Senior!"
In any case, what these ancient cultivators represent is the history of human civilization and the past of all modern practitioners.
Without the past, how can there be a future?
Just as he was about to turn around and leave, Li Yao noticed a detail.
In front of the four clay-bodied idols, dozens of plates of roast chicken, bad meat, steamed stuffed buns, green balls, and dried incense were enshrined.
Li Yao knew that with the poverty level of the villagers in this place, they couldn't even afford millet porridge. Roast chicken, bad meat, white bread, etc., were the most precious delicacies that they didn't even think about during the Chinese New Year.
The villagers bought these things for the four clay idols. I don't know how much painstaking effort and effort they put in, and how much heart they represent!
However, these things are slow in front of the clay idols, and in the end they are cheap for snakes, rats, rats and ants.
Standing outside the temple were a few disheveled, beggar-like children standing on tiptoes, drooling, staring at the sacrifices, watching the roast chicken and bad meat a little bit. Corrupted, but did not dare to step forward even to lick it.
Li Yao heard the thunderous beating from the stomachs of the children.
Just a little bit of affection for Gu Xiu rose from the bottom of my heart, but it was suppressed in an instant.
At this time, there was another burst of wailing from the village outside, and the crying seemed to be contagious. After a while, the entire village, and even several nearby villages were drowned by the crying.
When Li Yao turned out of the temple to have a look, he saw that the whole village had raised hundreds of white banners, and many of the people were very familiar with each other and wore sackcloth and filial piety.
"The day before yesterday, Elder Lei from Shiwumen led twenty new immortal masters into the mountain for trials. Unfortunately, a strange python that had been dormant underground for decades and was about to turn into a dragon was disturbed. Elder Lei and six new immortal masters fell, and fell. Already!"
Within the entire Shiwu City, with a radius of hundreds of miles, there were repeated cannons, and everyone cried.
...
In one day, Li Yao tracked down and killed the strange python with a red tumor on its head, and took out the corpses of Elder Lei and three practitioners in the Qi refining stage from its abdomen, and restrained them carefully. Get up, and put it at the intersection of the three main roads at the foot of the mountain when there is no one there.
After bowing to them three times, he returned to Wujiang Wharf, on his light boat, with a complicated mood.
Afterwards, I went all the way east to inspect the towns along the river, but put away the arrogance from modern civilization, and looked at the problem from the perspective of the local aborigines.
After the great river goes east, there are ten or twenty towns that are almost the same, centered on each practice sect, and then expand outward, and the cultivators are indeed high above, showing off their might, and surpassing the imperial power.
But the landforms of the entire middle and upper reaches of the Wujiang River are almost the same as those around the "Stone Martial City". There are high mountains and dense forests, and there are many fierce beasts and monsters. Without the fighting of cultivators and monsters, ghosts, tigers, wolves, dragons and snakes, ordinary people simply cannot survive. .
If Li Yao was born as a local farmer, facing the vicious monsters and tigers and wolves, what can he do except pin all his hopes on the "immortal teacher"?
If Li Yao was a local cultivator, he probably wouldn't feel guilty about this kind of relationship. On the contrary, he would feel that he was protecting the environment and the people, eliminating demons and defending the Tao. After practicing so hard, he was in danger of dying every day. The common people worshiped him , Is it not a matter of course to enshrine oneself and fear oneself?
This truth, but how to say it, I can't explain it clearly!
A few days later, they finally drove out of the middle and upper reaches of the Wujiang River, where the mountains are high and densely forested, and the river is tortuous, and entered the hills and plains in the middle and lower reaches of the Wujiang River.
When you get here, you will gradually enter the fertile land in the southeast with the most aura in Dagan. The degree of development has been greatly improved. Naturally, there are not so many primitive jungles, and there are not so many monsters, ghosts, wolves, tigers and leopards.
The hills and farmland here are highly utilized, and it is difficult to find even a piece of barren land the size of a fingernail.
After thousands of years of annexation and accumulation, most of the fields and forests belonged to the local noble families, and they were leased to farmers for farming.
However, the big surnames of the wealthy family are attached to a certain cultivation sect, and there are many "spiritual fields" with rich aura and the best quality, which are directly owned by the cultivation sect, and there is absolutely no reason for them to fall into the hands of ordinary people.
The land here is sparsely populated, and every inch of land is expensive. The spheres of influence of most of the cultivation sects are intertwined and intertwined.
Therefore, the biggest enemies of the cultivation sects in the middle and lower reaches of Wujiang River are no longer monsters and tigers and wolves, but other cultivation sects!
Here, Li Yao witnessed the struggle between two cultivation sects for the first time.
Under the leadership of seven or eight foundation-building monks, nearly a hundred practitioners in the Qi-refining period held the battle flags of their respective sects, and they collided fiercely like two groups of raging tigers and wolves. To the extreme, there is no sympathy for fellow Taoists at all.
In just half an hour of Huo Bing, a total of three Foundation Establishment cultivators and more than twenty Qi Refining cultivators fell.
And the reason was neither for any peerless supernatural powers nor for some natural treasures, it was just for a cow, an ordinary farm cow!
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Sorry everyone, I accompanied my wife to the postoperative review today, and I didn’t come back until the afternoon, so the update is late.
It's still three o'clock today, don't worry