Inheriting a Taoist temple, the story begins with Wu Zetian offering incense.

Chapter 381 The Tailor's Request! [Seeking Monthly Tickets]

With some time before lunch, Zhou Yi inquired about Wang Qiang's birthday and then used his grandfather's phone number to call the tailor, hoping he could expedite the making of a Taoist robe.

The tailor was used to requests for Zhou Yi's advice; after asking for the birth date and time, he quickly provided three colors:
“Vermilion, jasmine, or pure gray—choose one.”

Vermilion is a deeper color than maroon, while cinnabar is a bluish-black color. Combined with pure gray, these are all colors associated with winter.

Zhou Yi felt that the colors of pure gray and jade were too cold and did not match Wang Qiang's approachable temperament, so he chose vermilion and asked the tailor Xu to speed up the process.

The tailor said:

"There's so much business right now, several urgent ones... Recently, something really big happened in the industry, and everyone wants to make high-protection robes."

Zhou Yi inquired:
"What's the big deal? I haven't heard about it."

Upon hearing this, the tailor immediately adopted the airs of a senior expert:

"Looks like you're pretty out of touch with the news. Eight of the Manchu descendants in the capital died in one go, and their bodies can't even be found. They tried to use a secret method to summon the souls, but it resulted in several bolts of lightning... I heard the scene was quite dramatic. It's a pity I wasn't there, otherwise I could have filmed a few short videos and saved them. Lightning striking the Manchus would be a top-notch snack to enjoy with drinks."

The Book of Changes: ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

I just wanted to have some fun, but how did I end up getting involved myself?
The remains of the eight Manchus were completely destroyed, and their souls were also annihilated by lightning. They could not be found, but they could not even deduce this matter... Was it the blind man who helped to cover it up, or did Hunyuan Palace have its own signal jammer?
Since it concerned him, Zhou Yi instantly lost his interest in gossip, while the tailor was noticeably more talkative today:
"Is business busy at your Taoist temple lately? Are you interested in earning some extra money?"

The Book of Changes is somewhat strange:
"What's going on? Are you planning to make me fulfill those conditions for making the Taoist robe?"

The tailor's Taoist robes cost 100,000 yuan each. Zhou Yi made five or six sets but didn't pay him. Instead, he offered a condition to offset the debt... Although the tailor never mentioned paying him back, Zhou Yi felt it wasn't good to keep owing him money, so he brought it up himself.

The tailor was waiting for this very sentence:
"This is a private matter. If it's too much trouble, I can not only cancel one condition, but also offer an extra cash reward. What do you think?"

He could repay a favor and make money at the same time... Zhou Yi was really tempted:

"Just tell me what it is. Let's make this clear first: if it's about getting people out of Myanmar or something, then forget it. I don't have that kind of ability."

The tailor smiled and said:

“I won’t bother you with things abroad, we have acquaintances there… It’s like this, my nephew bought a villa in the eastern district of Zhengzhou, spending over 20 million yuan in total, but after moving in, he always feels like there are strangers in the villa. He installed surveillance cameras throughout the house but couldn’t find any trace of them, which has made him very paranoid. Now the whole family is afraid to live there… If you’re not too busy, could you go and take a look for me?”

Zhou Yi initially thought it was something serious, but after waiting for a long time, it turned out to be just a minor domestic disturbance:
"Send me your address and your nephew's contact information. I'll take some time to check on him in the next couple of days. If there's anything sinister or evil causing trouble, I'll help deal with it for your nephew."

With a villa worth over 20 million, it's not unreasonable to persuade him to invite a statue of a deity, right?
If that doesn't work, we can implement an annual subscription system, costing 300,000 yuan a year. Hunyuan Palace will cover all the metaphysical issues related to the family.

As long as you're willing to spend the money, Master Dao has plenty of solutions.

The tailor sent the address and contact information via text message, and then said:

“I wanted to go and take a look, but I haven’t had the time. The workload has piled up, and I haven’t left the house for two weeks… That’s all for now. I’ll contact you again if anything comes up.”

After hanging up the phone, Zhou Yi said to Wang Qiang:
"Your Taoist robe should arrive in about half a month. Wear this for now... What does Liu Ao need? Take advantage of this free time to gather the supplies for you."

Wang Qiang counted on her long, slender fingers and began to describe what Liu Ao wanted:

"Solar panels, flashlights, high-capacity power supplies, water heaters, shower gel, shampoo, sparklers, Bluetooth speakers, projectors, educational game consoles..."

At this point, Zhao Rui, who had been listening in, asked:
What is an educational game console?

Zhou Yi rubbed her head and said:

"It's a game console. When I was a kid, I used the excuse of studying to get my grandpa to buy me a computer. Then I installed a bunch of high-end learning software like LOL, StarCraft, and Warcraft. When my grandpa found out, he punished me by making me copy the Taishang Ganying Pian a hundred times with a brush."

The chubby girl laughed heartily upon hearing this:
"So you were mischievous as a child, Immortal Master. I thought you'd always been so serious."

The group drove down the mountain and purchased a lot of supplies for Wang Qiang that could be used in the Eastern Palace. Xi Shi, on the other hand, returned to the Spring and Autumn Period and told Confucius that the Confucian sage's carving knife could be used.

Upon hearing this, Confucius immediately pulled off the brush head and threw it aside. Then he repeatedly washed the part where the brush head was embedded in clean water.

Strangely, even though it wasn't very dirty, it would quickly become filthy every time the water was changed.

Confucius stopped when there was no dirt left in the penholder, and then asked Zilu to catch a weasel and use the tail hair to make a new pen head.

Yan Hui began to formulate a plan to travel to Yunwu Mountain:

"Teacher, when shall we set off?"

Confucius was a man of action:
"We will depart in five days. During this time, you may bid farewell to your relatives and friends. If you do not wish to go, your master will not force you."

All the disciples expressed their intention to follow their master, and many even planned to bring their families along, totaling three to four hundred people.

Developing a mountain with so many people is relatively easy, especially since Xi Shi will accompany everyone and can bring a large amount of resources from Hunyuan Palace at any time.

Soon, Zilu came over carrying a weasel and placed it in front of Confucius. Confucius took the hair from the tip of the tail, first tied it into a small tuft with a thin rope, then separated the hairs by length and put them together to make a standard brush head, which he then inlaid into the brush handle.

He held the calligraphy brush in both hands, carefully feeling its texture:
"The filth has been removed, but it needs to be nurtured for more than a year to fully recover."

Then, he looked up at the sky and said with a worried expression:

"With the recent frequent rains, if this continues, the people will have no harvest."

After saying this, Confucius took a brush and, referring to the Chinese character comparison chart brought by Xi Shi, wrote a standard character 【晴】 in regular script in the air.

As soon as it was written, the character floated up into the sky and then suddenly exploded. The dark clouds in the sky immediately drifted away, and the entire sky above the State of Wei was filled with bright sunshine and cloudless skies.

Xi Shi carefully filmed this scene, intending to show it to Xin Qiji and Li Bai... The Confucian scholar's pen, inspired by the Confucian sage, was a thousand times more effective than that of an ordinary person.

This was written even with the Confucian pen damaged. Once it has been properly nurtured, this pen might just be upgraded to the "Confucian Sage Pen".

Confucius looked up at the sky and after a long while said:
"Unifying the written language is imperative... Starting today, we will begin to promote the use of standard Chinese characters and implement the idea of ​​unification in all the vassal states. The people of Qin, Zhao, and Chu are all Chinese. We will emphasize the expansion of our territory. As for who will unify the whole of China in the future, that is not important."

What Confucius wanted to do was to sow the seeds of unification and pave the way in advance. As for whether the Qin state would eventually unify the world, that was not important. Even without the Qin state, other states would have unified the world. Then, following the path of unification, he would continue to move forward, end the internal enfeoffment system, and continue to enfeoff external states.

Just as cities are built with first, second, and third rings, the territory of a country can also expand outwards in concentric circles.

Only with a sufficiently large territory can the Chinese people live and work in peace and contentment, without worrying about land.

History has proven that uniting with foreign tribes has no good outcome, so Confucius intended to eliminate this problem at its root. He didn't care about the power struggles and dynastic changes within China; he only considered the survival of the Chinese nation from a macro perspective.

After Xi Shi returned to Hunyuan Palace, she showed the footage she had filmed, which stunned all the beauties, young and old, as well as Zhao Xu, who had come to freeload lunch.

Upon learning that Confucius was to travel a thousand miles to Yunwu Mountain, Wang Qiang said:

"I'll send the old master some mounts. The Crown Prince keeps some horses at his estate in the suburbs; you can bring them all over."

Xi Shi said:

"Too much is not good; there's not much feed over there..."

Just as they were getting to this point, the wealthy and powerful Zhao Xu took over all the provisions:

"I will write a letter later. When the Osmanthus Fairy arrives, please have Her Majesty the Empress give it to her. Cai Jing will handle everything."

The provisions for several hundred people did not require the use of the Song Dynasty's national treasury. Simply finding a corrupt official to squeeze them would be enough to feed all the people and horses of the Confucius School along the way.

Lunch consisted of rice with stir-fried dishes. Wang Qiang's favorite was scrambled eggs with tomatoes. The eggs, coated in tomato sauce, were mixed with rice and tasted even better than the food served in the Eastern Palace. She could never get enough of it.

After eating and drinking her fill, she left Hunyuan Palace with all the supplies and appeared in the courtyard of the East Palace.

As soon as he appeared, Liu Ao and Consort Xu surrounded him:
"Wow, so many supplies! Thank you so much, sister!"

Wang Qiang laughed and said:

"If you want to thank someone, thank the Immortal Master. He heard you wanted these things, so he drove to town to buy them on the spot..."

At this point, she took out Confucius's carving knife and said:

"By the way, this is a magical artifact that the Immortal Master instructed me to give to Liu Xiang and his son. He wanted them to study its specific uses. If they couldn't figure it out, he would have Li Taibai take it away in a few days."

Upon hearing this, Liu Ao immediately said:

“Let’s go visit the Grand Minister of the Imperial Clan and, while we’re at it, brag to Liu Xin about how I killed the Xiongnu deputy envoy.”

He arranged for a horse-drawn carriage, and personally sat on the carriage shaft to drive it, all the way to Liu Xiang's house.

As soon as he entered, Liu Xiang came out to greet him with an elderly man and a young man he didn't recognize:

"Your Highness, I am deeply sorry for not welcoming you properly... This is a great Confucian scholar I invited from Western Shu. His name is Zhuang Zun Zhuang Junping. He is a famous scholar from Western Shu. I invited him to annotate the Gongyang Commentary together."

Liu Ao did not recognize Zhuang Junping, but upon hearing that he was a great Confucian scholar, he took the initiative to perform the disciple's salute.

Welcome to Chang'an!

At this moment, the young man beside Zhuang Junping suddenly stared at the carving knife in Wang Qiang's hand in surprise and said:
"What is this? Why is it glowing?"

Upon inspection, no one noticed anything unusual about the carving knife. Fearing his disciple might offend the Crown Prince, Zhuang Junping said apologetically:

"This is my unworthy disciple Yang Xiong. I brought him here to broaden his horizons, and I hope you all will forgive his poor performance..."

(End of this chapter)