"...Yes." Fu Yunge bit his lip and nodded as he recalled the memory that had just sent chills down his spine.
"Take care of your injuries. You can come and go wherever you want." The old man looked into the distance with a distant look.
The two were silent again, holding tea cups to each other and looking at the sky and the mountains in the distance.
After a while, Fu Yunge hesitated and asked: "Old Qiao, um... did you have such inner demons in the past?"
His question made the woodcutter turn his head. But almost without thinking, the old man replied: "No."
Seeing Fu Yunge's confused eyes, the woodcutter couldn't help but put down his tea cup. He stood up and walked back and forth in the small courtyard for two times before looking at Fu Yunge: "As long as you have no worries, blend in with nature, and escape from the troubled world, the inner demons will not haunt you."
"Heaven and earth are impermanent, and things in the world are turbid and filthy. Being stained by them does not involve the mind of the sutra. Return to the great simplicity and settle down without limit."
The old woodcutter pointed to the distance, the wind blew over his beard, and he looked like an immortal, "You are nature, born in nature, return to nature. All things exist forever, and the chaos of the world is just meaningless dirt. Understand the world with a refined mind, so that All the things in the world have passed by you, but they cannot stay in your heart."
The old man's words were indeed a bit profound, but Fu Yunge generally understood some of them. Does it mean facing everything with a detached mentality? But it seemed too cold, and he couldn't do that in the face of disaster.
"You can't do it now. But the next best thing is to face the past. I just hope you can choose the pros and cons. Otherwise, the nightmare will become an obstacle to your progress, rather than a motivation."
The old woodcutter's deep eyes seemed to penetrate into Fu Yunge's heart and he said calmly.
"I see..." Fu Yunge seemed to have some realization.
The old man added: "The same goes for cultivation. It's just that I haven't touched upon the cultivation of internal energy for many years. You can understand it yourself."
"This..." Fu Yunge suddenly found doubts again, raised his head and asked, "Why can't you maintain your appearance? Is it because your internal strength is stagnant?"
"You saw that sign." The old woodcutter looked uncertain, like clouds of different shapes in the sky.
"Yes. Even if Xuan Hui releases the shackles of being a hundred years old, the length of life and the shape of the body still depend on the acquired practice. I have stopped entering the country for nearly eighty years, and my life span is probably coming soon."
"But since all things are eternal, life and death are just trivial matters, so why worry." He walked to the table, took away the teapot and filled it with water, and said leisurely as he walked, "Jiji Yingying is just a handful of loess, so it is better to let nature take its course. "
Fu Yunge turned his head and stared at the old woodcutter's back, admiring and surprised at the same time.
In his late years, this name really suited his personality. In the lonely evening scene of Sangyu, he was like a leisurely cloud.
In the evening, Fu Yunge helped with the cooking. The smoke from the cooking pots rose up in the dusk and blended into the color of the distant mountains.
Fu Yunge also explained the current situation outside to the old man in detail, but the old man did not show any attitude. Perhaps the matter of Jiuche Xiaoying was just a touch of the filth in the world in his opinion.
Before going to bed at night, Fu Yunge tried to cultivate the lost vitality on the kang. Everything in his mind was what the woodcutter had said to him in the afternoon, so Fu Yunge simply explored it a little.
He emptied out the remaining vitality in the sea of qi, then stretched his meridians, trying to experience the feeling that Mr. Qiao said little by little.
After a while, wisps of coolness in the air penetrated into the skin. Fu Yunge immediately used his power to eliminate the miscellaneous energy and gather the available energy inside. The new energy flowed along the veins and flowed into the sea of Dantian energy like hundreds of rivers converging into the sea.
Fu Yunge was pleasantly surprised and repeated the process a few more times, but soon felt exhausted. Perhaps he had just recovered and his body was still unstable, so he quickly stopped the process.
The next morning, the woodcutter rarely went out. The two of them cooked mustard soup for breakfast, and the old man Qiao didn't say much during the process. Fu Yunge always felt a little weird and kept glancing at the old man from the corner of his eyes to see what he had planned.
When he was almost done eating, the old woodcutter put down his bowl and said slowly to Fu Yunge:
"Last night's practice method cannot be taken as a shortcut. Unless the meridians throughout the body are strong enough to carry half of the vitality, it will be harmful. With your current ability, you can do it up to three times a day."
"Yes, yes." After hearing his teachings, Fu Yunge nodded repeatedly and memorized it carefully.
The cool wind outside the house blew in, and Fu Yunge looked outside, only to find that the ground in the courtyard outside the door was wet.
It seemed that it rained last night. No wonder the woodcutter didn't go out this morning. The rain has soaked the forest trees, and I am afraid that it is impossible to cut firewood now.
But when he turned around, he was surprised to find that the old man was still looking at him.
"Old Qiao, what's wrong?" Fu Yunge felt a little uncomfortable and asked proactively.
The old woodcutter squinted his eyes, stared at him, and said in a deep voice: "You can't leave now."
"This..." Fu Yunge was a little confused.
"After you have recovered from your injuries, you have plans to leave immediately, but you can't." The old man's pupils were like unfathomable pools of water. "If you want to risk your life, you must at least have the ability."
Fu Yunge was a little stunned: "Yesterday you said..."
"Recuperate the injury, it means the state will be in seven days." The old woodcutter did not want to comment.
"Now that I have rescued you, the old man can't watch you overestimate your capabilities and die again."
…………
Fu Yunge kept watching the woodcutter go out, his rickety back gradually disappearing among the trees. He wiped his eyes nervously, feeling a little confused.
In the sky, misty clouds are still drifting across the mountains.
Fu Yunge took a long breath, and the thin cool breeze filled his heart and spleen. He probably understood what the old man meant, and felt warm in his heart.
I won’t leave just yet. Fu Yunge said silently.
There was no longer any shadow of the old woodcutter in the distance. He turned around and went back to his room, where he helped the old woodcutter clean up with all his heart.
At noon, Fu Yunge prepared the meal alone, but after waiting for a long time, he still didn't get the old woodcutter back, which made him feel a little strange.
Normally, the woodcutter should have returned by now. Fu Yunge thought to himself. He waited for a while, but still saw no trace of the old man, and gradually became uneasy.
Could it be Jiuche Xiaoying...? Fu Yunge was in a state of confusion, and the more he thought about it, the more wrong he became.
Fearing that what he was most worried about would happen, he quickly locked the door and prepared to go out and search.
At this moment, two footsteps came from behind the trees outside the door. Fu Yunge's steps to the yard suddenly stopped. He prepared for the worst and held his breath to focus on the figure that was about to appear.
One step, two steps... Fu Yunge listened carefully to the sound of steps and stared closely. Not far from him was a shovel, and he was sure he could...
Just as he was thinking this, before he finished his thoughts, he suddenly saw two people walking out from the other side of the bush one after the other.
The man in front is the old woodcutter. When his gaze shifted to the person behind him, his eyes suddenly widened.
It's the familiar red plum sword - poinsettia, the poinsettia is here!
