The joy at the foot of the mountain did not affect Li Ye's state of mind at all. After his state dropped to the first level, he did not go to the snow to practice swordsmanship, nor did he rush to the cold pool to temper his body.
In the past few days, he had been quietly weaving the unfinished bamboo hat in the shed.
Although the realm dropped, he did not feel the loss of true energy in his body at all. On the contrary, it was now much more solid than when he was at the fifth level.
Xiaobai still went to bed after eating and no longer ran out to find the old wolf.
The knife in his hand was turned gently, and the thin bamboos slowly emerged one by one as the knife turned.
It was as if what he was weaving at this moment was not a bamboo hat, but a treasure. From time to time, he would put the bamboo pieces in his hand on the fire to bake, and the whole wooden shed was filled with the fragrance of purple bamboo.
After reading the Hua Dharma Sutra many times these days, he would always compare the trivial matters in his daily life with some of the important points in the scriptures.
I also thought about the incomprehensible meanings of the sutras taught by the old monks in the Great Buddha Temple, and I felt more and more important that my husband should cultivate his own state of mind.
According to the Mahayana root nature that the old monk told me at the foot of the mountain, there are upper, middle and lower roots. Most practitioners in the five realms have blunt roots.
The so-called: The heart desires the Tao, but cannot achieve it. The old monk said that he wanted to practice visualization, he wanted to practice samatha, he wanted to practice ultimate tranquility, but the ultimate tranquility never came. I want to practice Samabati, but I can’t remember it properly. If you want to practice Zen, you must first practice counting breaths. If you can’t count your breaths...
I feel that the more I practice Buddhism, the more profound it becomes, and the more I practice, the shallower I become.
Just like the bamboo hat in your hand, weaving it becomes more troublesome the further you go, just like writing scriptures in bamboo strips, if you are not careful, it will be broken in the middle.
I have to cut the bamboo strips into strips again, and then bake them on the fire to soften them before I can continue to weave them into the bamboo hat.
It's as if the old monk is sitting in front of me, preaching to himself: You have to know that when you practice hard, you can only move forward, not backward. If you retreat, where will you retreat to? Do you want to retreat to the position of an ordinary person?
Thinking about the day I started practicing with my husband, there was no way out.
Whether it's walking with a heavy load, begging for alms to cultivate one's health, whether it's carving words on a stone wall, or practicing swordplay in the glacier, everything requires a huge amount of mental and physical effort.
I have already retreated from the fifth level of Jindan to the first level. Do I still have to go back to foundation building and Qi gathering?
Li Ye shook his head and murmured: "This is absolutely impossible. I will never let such a thing happen."
"Is it impossible? What kind of thing will you not let happen?" The door of the wooden shed was pushed open, and the old ape walked in with a small bamboo basket in his hand.
Li Ye was startled, looked at the old ape and said, "It's nothing, I was just thinking about my practice."
He stopped knitting and put the bamboo hat on the table. Add water to the kettle and put it on the stove to boil.
"I have a question. I've always wanted you." The old ape tapped the slate on the table gently.
"Little girl, before you came here, you had broken through to the fifth level. Why have you returned to the first level in the past few days? Could it be that you have encountered some major problems in your practice?"
Li Ye looked at the old ape, smiled softly and said, "I still can't hide it from your eyes. My husband said that my realm improved too quickly, so he asked Xiaoqing to bring me a pill. My five-level golden elixir was melted, I returned to the first-level realm, and I started all over again.”
The old ape was stunned, looked at Li Ye and said, "Is this okay? Is there such a kind of elixir in the world?"
"I heard from Xiaoqing that this elixir comes from another world and is a very precious thing. Sir, you have put a lot of thought into my cultivation." Li Ye took out the tea leaves and started to make tea.
Then he took out a plate of peanuts from his back and put it on the table, indicating that the old ape could eat it.
The two of them started drinking tea quietly in the shed and peeling peanuts. Li Ye occasionally added some hot tea for him, then peeled the peanuts and put them in his mouth.
The old ape suddenly laughed.
Li Ye also laughed.
The old ape pointed at Li Ye with a trembling big finger, and his voice was trembling: "You are so cruel! I have been practicing on Tianshan Mountain for thousands of years, and you are the first young man to do something poisonous to me."
The old ape said long-windedly.
"Is it easy to reach the fifth level of cultivation? How many practitioners have devoted all their efforts, just to advance to a higher level, you actually cut off your fifth level with one sword!"
"I ask myself, I absolutely can't do it! If you don't believe me, ask the old wolf. If he can do it, I will lose this old face to you."
Sighing, the old ape picked up the pot and filled the two cups with tea, and sighed heavily.
"I really don't know what is going on in your husband's mind? How could he deceive his apprentice like this?"
Li Ye looked at him and smiled without saying a word. He just peeled the peanuts and put them in his mouth.
"You call him up, I want to question him. Let's reason with him carefully!" said the old ape, glaring at him.
Li Ye looked into his eyes and didn't speak for a long time. He carefully peeled a peanut and threw it into his mouth, chewing it carefully for a while.
After a long while, he murmured: "The moment Xiaoqing gave it to me, I felt the same as you. I thought there is no one in the world who would cheat his apprentice like this and actually ask me to take poison.?"
"That's right. How can there be any reason to force your apprentice to take poison?" The old ape became more and more excited as he spoke.
Li Ye looked at the excited old ape, shook his head and said, "But what Xiaoqing told my husband: A stable practice in the golden elixir realm is extremely important to me. If I break through too fast, my foundation will be unstable."
"Is there such a saying? How come I don't know about it, and I haven't heard it from Old Wolf?" When the old ape heard this, he was surprised.
Li Ye ignored him and continued: "The only way is to melt these five realms and start over!"
"So there is really such a saying? It seems that we are a little ignorant staying in the mountains!" The old ape sighed.
"Not to mention the fifth level, even if I have reached the ninth level of golden elixir, my husband will force me to melt it and start practicing again. This is my husband."
Li Ye couldn't help but laugh when he thought of his husband's expression as if he wanted to wear iron armor.
"Xiao Qing told me that this kind of elixir is not available in the Five Realms, and even the sky is extremely precious."
"After I took the elixir, my level just dropped, but I tried to use the true energy in my dantian, but it was not lost at all. Instead, it became more solid than before."
The old ape frowned and remained silent.
"So that's the truth. At your age, Mr. Xiao, it's really scary to break through to the fifth level of the Golden Core at such a young age. The realm is inevitably a bit unstable."
"For your future practice, sir, it seems that you can only break your realm into pieces and practice all over again. But you have already gone through the previous path, and starting over again is just a waste of more time and energy."
The old ape sighed: "And you don't lack time and energy, so naturally you are not afraid of melting into these realms."
"According to the current situation of Lao Lang and I, we never dare to give up our realm. We look forward to realizing the arrival of the Nine Tribulations every day, and being able to successfully overcome the tribulations and break through the void."
Waving his hand, the old ape felt a little depressed.
Li Ye said: "My situation is quite special, and it is not suitable for you two seniors. My husband also said that this elixir is poison to other practitioners, but it is good medicine only for me. This just varies from person to person."
"It's just because you are too young. Is this the saying: you don't have to worry if you have too many debts, and you don't itch if you have too many lice?" The old ape shook his head.
Li Ye reflected on the black fruit in the bamboo basket and asked puzzledly, "What kind of fruit is this? Can it be eaten? Why do I feel that it is dirty and more poisonous than the pill I took."
The old ape laughed and said: "Fart! Who told you to eat these fruits? These are good things that my children picked up from the mountains. Grind them into powder and put them in the pot until oil is cooked. Applying them on the body can kill poisonous insects. Bite wounds and inexplicable stomachaches can be cured by taking some."
"I saw that you had been weaving a broken bamboo hat for several months without finishing it, and I thought you regarded it as a treasure. When you are free, grind the fruit and boil it to get the oil, and then apply it on the bamboo hat. Apply more After several times, no matter how heavy the wind or rain is in the future, even if you soak it in water, it will not deform or leak."
Li Ye's eyes lit up and he looked at the old ape excitedly and said, "I've been worrying about this for the past few days. I thought that even if I finished the weaving one day, it would definitely leak and deform if it rained heavily. I didn't expect these trivial matters. You have thought of everything for me, I really want to thank you."
After speaking, he handed the bamboo hat on the table to the old ape.
"My fingers are so thick, how can I braid it for you? Are you kidding me?" The old ape took the bamboo hat and played with it in his hand.
"Turn it over and take a closer look." Li Ye did not tell the old ape the secret in the bamboo hat. "Let's see if you can understand my little bamboo hat."
The old ape turned over the bamboo hat in his hand and looked at it carefully.
After a while, he took a breath of cold air, looked at Li Ye blankly and said, "I asked you how it took you several months to make a bamboo hat. It turns out that you carved so many scriptures on the bamboo pieces."
"Do you want to let the bamboo hat recite Buddhist scriptures for you while you are getting wet in the rain? Or do you want to pray to God not to get you wet when it rains?"
The old ape stared at Li Ye, as if looking at a little monster, feeling incredible.
Li Ye laughed loudly when he heard this, and said while laughing: "How could I have so many ideas? They are just used to sharpen my state of mind."
Looking at the confused look on the first ape's face, he continued: "My husband has always wanted me to practice my state of mind, but I have never found a good way. I don't want to slowly hone my skills while weaving a bamboo hat slowly." State of mind.”
…
"What he said are very simple words. It's really easy to achieve double capacity." The old ape thought about Li Ye sitting quietly under the shed for the past few months and weaving a scene, and he felt a little excited.
"I believe that few practitioners in the world are willing to spend a lot of time on such troublesome and complicated matters."
The old ape looked at him and admired him sincerely.
Li Ye smiled: "I am not the majority of practitioners in the world."
The old ape was stunned for a moment, and then he thought about the thing that could be easily accomplished by worldly practitioners since the night when Li Ye came to the mountain.
He had practiced practice for hundreds of years before he dared to practice standing under a pool of water. How old was Li Ye? He dared to train his body hard in the pond.
Looking at Li Ye who looked relaxed next to him: "Although I haven't tempered my state of mind as hard as you, you are the descendant of my husband after all, and you are destined to follow a different path from the practitioners in the world!"
"Maybe neither Lao Lang nor I will be able to see you grow up, but I still want to bless you from the bottom of my heart."
He took a sip of water and continued.
"The sweat you put in today will pay off one day, I believe this."
Ning Que smiled and said, "I didn't think about it that much. I just occasionally thought that I still have some days left on this mountain. I thought that you and Senior Old Wolf hadn't left yet, so I thought it was very interesting for me to knit my bamboo hat. , so I want to stick to it.”
Looking at the mist on the stove fire, Li Ye smiled lightly.
Looking at the sunny boy in front of him, the old ape also laughed.
