After finishing his work, Lu Pingchuan came to a mountain spring he was familiar with and began to pack the game. The process of plucking and gutting the prey made Tang Ping feel bloody and pickled. When she saw Qian Chao going to the forest to collect firewood for barbecue, she left Yanxuan who was helping Lu Pingchuan and ran to collect firewood.
"Hey, Mr. Qian, I always feel that you still have something to say." Tang Ping asked Qian Chao next to her while picking up dry branches and sticks from the ground.
"Well, there are indeed some things I haven't told you," Qian Chao, holding a small pile of firewood, stopped and said, "Before I tell you, I have another question to ask you."
"Just ask."
"Based on your family background, you shouldn't have to stay with us in Youming Valley. Your sixth grandfather is the elder of the sect. You can directly enter the inner gate. Why do you come here to practice with us?" Where is your body?" Qian Chao asked.
"Do you believe me if I say I'm playful?"
Qian Chao shook his head, as if he didn't believe it.
"My sixth grandfather said that not many of the sons born in the sect are promising. The sons born in this family are those who were born in the Wuling Sect. The children of the monks in the sect are similar to the children of ordinary aristocratic families. Most of them cannot eat. They are suffering, let alone being wronged. They are usually arrogant and have high ambitions but low abilities, so my sixth grandfather said that there are not many of them who are promising, and only the second and third sons can take a look in the future. He doesn't want me to become a five-spirited dude. It just so happens that I am also playful, and it was too boring to be around my sixth grandpa, so I came here."
Qian Chao nodded after hearing this and said, "It's pretty much what I expected. It seems that you are a person with great ambitions."
"I don't dare to talk about my big ambitions, but I just want to go further in my future practice. Hey, are you satisfied with my answer? Is it time to say what I haven't said yet?"
At this time, the two of them had picked up a pile of firewood, which was probably enough for this time, so they each carried it and walked back.
"The elder of my family I mentioned before, do you know how he was injured?"
"Didn't you say that you went out to do something for Jingshiyuan and encountered danger and got injured on the way?" Tang Ping replied.
"Yes, but in the book my elder deeply hated that none of the four companions who went with him came to help him. He said that if the five of them worked together to fight against the enemy, even if he was still injured, the foundation of his practice would not be lost. , speaking of it, I am a good elder, but when the situation suddenly changed, he was not the most dangerous one. He couldn't bear to reach out to rescue his companions in an accident, but he didn't want to end up like this."
"So that's it!" Tang Ping sighed after hearing this, "Then what exactly do you want to do?"
"Of course I don't want to make the same mistakes as my elders in the future. Speaking of which, I'm a little confused as to why the Jingshiyuan stipulates that the things they do for their disciples can only be done by five people at a time. Do you know the reason?" Qian Chao asked.
"I really don't know about this. I know the rule of five people staying together, but I have never considered the reason. I am also a little curious when you say this." Tang Ping replied.
Qian Chao nodded and continued: "My idea is that since I have to be with people in the future because of the affairs of Jingshiyuan, instead of being with people who I have known for a short time and have nods to each other, it is better to be in Youming Valley now. What do you think about finding a few people with similar interests and temperaments who can be friends now and partners in the future?"
"Oh? So Brother Lu must be your chosen one?"
"That's right, when doing things, you have to make a decision before taking action. When making friends, you need to know each other first and then know each other. In my opinion, this Brother Lu has a pure and innocent heart, but he is a bit lazy. I mean he is too lazy to use his brain, but he is sure He is a good friend." Qian Chao said.
Tang Ping nodded, and Lu Pingchuan had the same impression on him, but she asked again: "So, what did you like about Sister Yan who came with me?"
"I have very little contact with that sister Yan, and I don't know much about it, but I believe in your vision. It should be good."
"Well, you are a good flatterer. Although Sister Yan is a bit timid and cowardly in character, she is a very good person. Well, Sister Yan can indeed be considered one, but is there still one missing?"
"Do you have anyone to choose?" Qian Chao asked.
"I don't have any candidates. Except for you and Brother Lu, everyone I know in this valley keeps a distance from me. Oh, by the way, how about that Liang Bake who was beaten by you?"
"He was a little worse. I beat him that time. Even if the beating made him wake up and thank me, it was still a beating in full view of the public, and his face was naturally damaged. It is inevitable that he still has a grudge, or Don't choose him." Qian Chao said.
Tang Ping nodded and said, "What you said makes sense. I don't have many candidates. What about you? By the way, have you fallen in love with the one named Li Jian?"
"That's right, if you don't have anyone to choose from, I'll go find him."
"Well, you can try it, but I still don't understand why you always value Li Jian so much. Is it because he is very powerful?"
"I don't understand. When Li Jian got on the bronze carriage, I felt that this person was extraordinary. I haven't talked to him yet, but if I guessed correctly, this person should be a military commander. , and he had just experienced a life-and-death bloody battle before boarding the car. As soon as he entered the car, I felt a strong bloody aura. What is rare is that he still showed restraint when he taught those stubborn and provocative people."
Tang Ping thought about the situation when she first met Li Jian. She didn't pay that much attention, so she couldn't help but said, "I didn't notice this. Is this Li Jian really like this?"
Qian Chao replied: "You can ask him yourself if you have the opportunity in the future. This person is relatively cold and it is not easy to make friends, but once you make friends with him, he is the kind of person who can be entrusted with big things."
Tang Ping nodded and looked up in the distance. Lu Pingchuan and Yanxuan were still picking up the prey by the mountain spring. Qian Chao was squatting down and building a few stones around the firewood pile.
Tang Ping felt that Qian Chao's proposal was quite good. When she first heard Qian Chao talk about it, she felt moved in her heart. Due to her own reasons and family background, she still had some unresolved problems, and she would definitely be extremely troubled in the future. If When trouble comes, if she has a few friends around her, such as Qian Chao, who is resourceful and resourceful, and a few people who are willing to help, she will definitely be much better off. Thinking of this, she moved on Qian Chao's proposal. thought.
However, there was one more thing that Qian Chao probably hadn't thought of. It was necessary for him to talk to him now, so as not to be careless and overjoyed in vain.
"Your idea is not bad, but there is one thing I don't know if you have thought about it. It is very important and affects the success or failure of your idea." Tang Ping said.
After setting up the last stone, Qian Chao stood up, clapped his hands, and smiled at Tang Ping: "I know what you are talking about. You are worried about my spiritual roots, right?"
Tang Ping said nothing and just nodded.
Her worries were indeed justified. Qian Chao said that his spiritual roots were too poor, so he tried his best to find this spiritual vein. Although it seems that entering the inner sect is not a problem now, spiritual roots are something you are born with and there is almost nothing you can do about it. Change. If the spiritual root is much worse, even if you enter the inner sect, your cultivation speed will be slow. It is very likely that Qian Chao's cultivation will be far behind the other people, or there will be a few people who are far behind because of their spiritual root qualifications. There will be uneven cultivation levels due to differences in people. In that case, it will be very troublesome to go to the Jingshi Institute to get things to do. Difficult things have high rewards, but only if everyone has a higher cultivation level to do them. Easy things have low rewards. Those with higher cultivation levels don't bother to do it. If several people have different cultivation levels in the future, they will eventually break up.
"I have considered what you said, but now I have no way to solve it." Qian Chao said and found a clean stone to sit down on. "Since I had this idea, what you said has been bothering me. But then I figured it out, at least one thing is certain or not difficult, that is, I can go to the inner gate with you, right?"
Tang Ping nodded after hearing this.
Qian Chao continued, "Do you know how I felt when I made no progress in practicing the Jade Sea Scripture? Haha, I'm not afraid of your jokes. I have been stunned since I entered the bronze carriage during the first round. This is a new world that I have never seen before. The bronze carriage shocked my heart. This world of spiritual practice is what I yearn for. In addition, the opportunity to come here is very rare, so I only wanted to enter the inner gate."
"But I found that my cultivation was difficult, and there was almost no hope when I entered the inner gate. I was almost in despair. It was the first time in my life that I knew what it was like to fail. After a lot of hard work, I found this spiritual vein. It’s a feeling of survival from a desperate situation.”
"You know? After this incident, I discovered that this practice does not mean that you will gain something for every effort you put in. I now feel that if you want to achieve success in this practice, the first thing you need is perseverance, and then flexibility. If one method doesn't work, you might as well try other methods. In the end, it will be God's favor. I have both reluctance and adaptability. I will tell you about God's favor when the time comes. But if something is not planned and arranged in advance, Then even if God wants to bless us, we won’t be lucky enough to endure it, right?”
After hearing this, Tang Ping looked at Qian Chao carefully as if she was getting acquainted with him again. Her sixth grandfather had said something similar to her before, and he said it when she was trying to teach her a lesson. The original words were: A practitioner has three things: The first is to be single-minded, the second is to have a clear mind, and the third is to have an opportunity. Those with advanced cultivation are no exception. The first two of these three are the most important. This opportunity is the most mysterious and cannot be forced. If you are not focused or can only do your best and seek fish by chance, even if you have the opportunity, you will only benefit others.
"Since you said so, I think we can give it a try. I just hope that the car will find its way to the mountain."
Qian Chao nodded after hearing this. He turned around and looked at Lu Pingchuan and Yanxuan who hadn't come over yet, then said to Tang Ping: "There is one more thing. I don't know if it has something to do with you, but I heard it accidentally. I don't know what it is. , but you should listen.”
Tang Ping asked curiously: "What's going on?"
So Qian Chao told Tang Ping that he had been practicing here until nightfall the day he found the spiritual vein. When he was about to return to his residence, he suddenly heard someone talking at the foot of the mountain.
Tang Ping nodded, this matter was in line with Qin Suijie's habit of only scheming behind people's backs, but he still asked uneasily: "How can you be sure that person is Qin Suijie?"
Qian Chao said: "The person he was talking to called him Mr. Qin. How many Mr. Qin are there in this valley? Besides, I recognized his voice. Later, I took a few glances at him from a distance through the lights in the valley. Isn't he wrong?" "
Tang Ping nodded after hearing this. She should think carefully about what Qian Chao said. Just when she had no clue, she heard Lu Pingchuan's loud voice saying: "Okay, okay, everything is packed." , light the fire and let’s start roasting!”
After hearing this, Tang Ping put the matter aside, grabbed the fire sickle from Qian Chao's hand and started to make fire.
"How...are you going to bake this?" Yanxuan was holding a branch with the bark peeled off. Lu Pingchuan sharpened the front of the branch with a knife and had a pheasant with its feathers plucked and cleaned up on a skewer.
"Here, come" Lu Pingchuan said, taking the branch from Yanxuan's hand, inserting the back end of the branch into the soil under his feet, raising the front end, and the pheasant strung on the branch was placed right in front of the bonfire. superior.
"Oh" Yanxuan finally understood.
Tang Ping thought it was funny, so she imitated Lu Pingchuan and inserted the branch in her hand into the soil at her feet. She then took another branch with a skinned hare on it and put it in her hand. The rabbit kept turning over the flames.
Lu Pingchuan saw it and said, "Sister Tang, this is not okay. Even if the meat on the outside is burnt, the meat on the inside will still be raw. This is how it works."
Lu Pingchuan asked Tang Ping to move the branch in his hand upward a little.
"Brother Lu," Tang Ping said, "I heard that there is a kind of delicacy, which is to paste the prepared chicken with mud and then bake it. How to make that? Do you know how?"
After hearing this, Lu Pingchuan replied: "Well, of course I can. If you want to eat it, I will make it for you another day, but you have to find some suitable leaves first. The best ones are lotus leaves. There are no other large ones. Leaves are also fine. Clean the pheasant, apply condiments on the inside and outside, wrap it with leaves first, wrap it in several layers, tie it with straw rope several times, then use yellow mud to paste it into a ball, dig it in the ground Bury it in a shallow pit and set up a bonfire on top. When the time comes, remove the fire, dig it out, smash the yellow mud and peel off the lotus leaves. The chicken will be steaming hot and tender, without any smoky smell. , Oh, if you can pick up pheasant eggs or other bird eggs, you can bury them together, and they will be cooked together. Alas, speaking of it, I haven’t eaten such good things in a long time.”
What Lu Pingchuan said made everyone yearn for it and make their mouths water. Tang Ping even shouted that Lu Pingchuan must do this once another day to satisfy his craving.
"Brother Lu," Yanxuan asked while staring at the pheasants on the branches, "where did you learn this skill?"
"Ahem! This still requires learning," Lu Pingchuan said, "I have followed my father to the mountains for hunting since I was a child. In our Lujiazhuang, my father's hunting ability is also among the top. I do all the hunting and barbecue. My dad taught me that it would take me more than ten days to go into the mountains. I would bring some dry food with me, but mainly I would roast some wild animals to eat."
Tang Ping was very envious after hearing this and said, "It must be very interesting to live like that!"
"Well, our Lujiazhuang is not a small place, but there isn't much land for growing crops. There are a lot of rocks in the ravines, and the food grown on that small amount of land is just enough for the whole family. In my family, my mother and my sisters-in-law are the ones who grow it. My father, I and my brothers only help when we are harvesting crops. At other times, we run to the mountains and catch prey. The meat can be eaten. If there is too much meat, we can pickle it and eat it slowly. The skin can be sold. Oh, there are also medicinal materials on the mountain. You can exchange some yams for money at the market in the city at the foot of the mountain, so our life on the village is not hard. I am the youngest in the family, and my parents have already started to give me some money. I saved up money and promised to marry me a wife in a few years. Alas, I came here unexpectedly. If my grandfather and father hadn't forced me to come, I really didn't want to come."
Several people found it interesting to hear what he said, especially at the end, they couldn't help but laugh.
Tang Ping knew the rules of the first selection and also knew that Lu Pingchuan was brought by his sixth grandfather. He couldn't help but asked with a smile: "Brother Lu, if you insist on not coming, there is nothing anyone else can do!"
"Ahem! I really can't blame others when I say this. Originally, I had made up my mind not to come, but that old... senior who came to our village." After saying this, Lu Pingchuan remembered what Qian Chao had told him about, that old man But Tang Ping's sixth grandfather couldn't say bad things about him in front of Tang Ping, so he quickly changed his words. There was no reason that Tang Ping couldn't understand, but she found it funny when she saw Lu Pingchuan quickly changing his words.
"The old man later gave me a glass of wine. It was the best wine I had ever had. Alas, I was also blamed for being greedy. Then I asked for another glass from the old man and came. But the old man was a bit He lied to me, he said that he could still drink such good wine when he came here, but after coming here for so long, when have you ever seen Chun Xiangtang bring out wine for others to drink!"
Tang Ping stopped laughing after hearing this, took out a small jar from her storage bag, handed it to Lu Pingchuan and said, "Come on, Brother Lu, I promised you a drink."
Lu Pingchuan was overjoyed when he saw it. He hurriedly took it, pulled out the stopper and took a deep breath.
"You've drank that old guy's wine, now how about you try the wine I brewed?"
This surprised Lu Pingchuan. He held the jar and asked, "Sister Tang, do you know how to make wine?"
"Brother Lu, you all know that it was my sixth grandfather who went to your place to preside over the first selection, so it's not surprising that I can make wine. He also taught me the art of making wine. Alas, I used to be lazy when he forced me to practice. , but I pestered him to teach me how to make this wine, but the heat may be a lot different. Try it, how does it taste?" Tang Ping took out the wine cup from the storage bag and handed it to Lu Pingchuan.
Unexpectedly, when Lu Pingchuan heard Tang Ping ask him to try it, he picked up the wine jar and brought it to his mouth. He drank two big sips, then closed his eyes and raised his head to taste it carefully. Finally, he took a long breath. He exhaled happily, and then praised: "Sister Tang, your wine is not bad, the wine is strong enough to have a thick taste. Although your sixth grandfather's wine is good, it is too light, but the wine you brew is better!"
After saying that, he picked up the wine jar and took two more gulps.
"Hey, Brother Lu, this is not how you drink wine. If you get drunk, we won't be able to carry you down the mountain."
"Don't worry, this jar of wine won't make me drunk."
"Brother Lu, take a closer look at the jar of wine before you speak."
After hearing this, Lu Pingchuan looked into the wine jar by the firelight and found that the wine jar was still full. There was quite a bit of wine. He couldn't help but feel happy that Lu Pingchuan was so elated that he didn't bother to care about why the wine was still full. Yes, I was just happy that I could always have wine to drink.
When Tang Ping saw him, she could only tell him to drink less.
Not long after, the game grilled on the fire was almost cooked, and hot oil was dripping down. Lu Pingchuan took out several small cloth bags, pinched out fine salt and other seasonings, and sprinkled them evenly while turning them. .
Yanxuan was surprised when he saw it. He followed Lu Pingchuan's example and sprinkled it on his roasted pheasant and said, "Brother Lu, you are really well prepared. You have even prepared these."
"These are all obtained from the cooks at Chunxiang Hall. Those guys are not fuel-efficient lamps. They will not give them to me for free. I exchanged them for game meat."
Tang Ping endured the burning of her hands and tore off a thin strip of meat from the rabbit leg and put it into her mouth and exclaimed that it was delicious. Xiao Bai, who was sitting in her arms with greed, was restless and begging for meat from her.
Yanxuan nodded after tasting it and said, "Well, this is my first time eating it like this. It's really delicious."
After eating, Tang Ping took out his own osmanthus wine and filled it for everyone. Qian Chao felt a little dizzy after seeing it. He had tried it at home and he would feel dizzy for half a day if he put the tip of his chopsticks into his mouth with a little wine and took a sip. Now he was really scared after seeing the wine.
"Hey, don't be stupid, it's good for your practice." Tang Ping advised.
Hearing that it was good for spiritual practice, Qian Chao closed his eyes and drank a glass of it as if he were drinking poison. He sipped the taste and felt that it was very delicious, so he drank several glasses in succession.
The meal ended happily in the evening, and the four of them went back to their own homes, but they made an appointment to come here to practice together tomorrow.
