Mythology Returns! Starting with Folklore and Strange Tales

On this ancient land, over thousands of years, a complete ethical system of Heaven, Earth, Ruler, Parents, and Teacher has been established.

Although, for people in the modern world, the first three have faded into history and become things only mentioned in textbooks and exam papers.

However, the close relationship with the teacher was not completely abandoned.

master.

Master.

The difference of a single word can have vastly different meanings.

The former involves you paying a price while I teach you skills; whether you learn it or not is your business, and I can teach you as much as I want. Once the simple relationship of mutual benefit is broken, there is no further connection between the two. The latter, however, requires offering six gifts, kowtowing, and serving tea. After becoming an apprentice, it's no different from having an extra father.

He teaches you skills, guides you in life, and helps you get married and have children. He is obligated to help you with all the difficulties you encounter, and you can inherit his network of relationships. Similarly, apprentices must treat their masters like their own fathers, and everything they do for their fathers must be applied to their masters.

The master-disciple relationship within the Taoist sect involves inheritance and Taoist lineage, making it far more complex than the ordinary one.

It wasn't that Zhang Wei didn't want to find a backer, but the "silhouette" of Liu Family Village only existed for seven days. After tonight, he would settle accounts and leave tomorrow morning. Now that he had taken a master, let alone fulfill his obligations, he wouldn't even be able to learn much before he had to leave in a hurry.

The Taoist sect is a colossal entity of the Yanhuang people. If he enters this sect and then encounters a suitable successor, wouldn't he be in a predicament?

Moreover, he only met the old Taoist priest briefly.

Teachers choose their disciples, and disciples also choose their teachers.

After considering all factors, Zhang Wei ultimately did not agree immediately.

Old Daoist Yiming, having lived to such an advanced age, would only see these things more clearly than Zhang Wei.

Having calmed down their initial restlessness, the old man and the young man began to observe each other on the way up the mountain.

The mountain roads in Zhuqianlin are much easier to walk on than those in Liujia Village and Xiakou Village. Perhaps it's because of the mining, but the roads here are mostly smooth, with ruts of varying depths, making them quite easy to walk on.

But even the easiest road still has to be traveled on foot. Although the militiamen only took a quarter of an hour to make the trip by bicycle, it would take them half an hour longer to walk. While they were on the road, the old Taoist priest, who was bored, started telling them some strange and supernatural stories.

Man-eating mountain demons, bewitching wood spirits, the human-headed snake just like the one described in the Three Flavors Study, the treacherous wolf strategist, and the original form of the White Bone Demon...

Many of these things have been buried in the dust of history. Now that magic has declined, some powerful and respectable spirits and demons have lost their habitat and have gradually disappeared. In their place are the spirits of the dead and folk monsters that have been passed down by word of mouth and transformed from other creatures.

Human hearts give rise to demonic thoughts; the collective thoughts can be used to worship gods and immortals, or they can gather evil spirits.

Monsters like the old cat and monkey are figments of people's imagination.

The old Taoist priest couldn't quite explain the exact cause. Perhaps it was a mountain demon that hadn't yet reached its full potential, or a wild spirit that had eaten too much of it and developed strange thoughts. Or perhaps it was a corpse in the mountains that had come back to life? But the fact that they were born from human thoughts is undeniable.

It is precisely for this reason that in recent years there have been attempts to use the method of gathering human thoughts to create a raging fire that would completely burn and destroy all the strange things on the land of Yanhuang.

Whether it succeeds or not is another matter.

However, the situation at Zhuqianlin is a rare example of the difficulty in the flourishing of various doctrines.

The foundation of the mass grave is incredibly thick. Moreover, the torture in life and the evil magic used by the Japanese ghost to cultivate the mineral veins after death have kept the area under mining for over ten years. The evil magic continues to operate without pause, and the souls of the dead have accumulated immense resentment day after day. The heavy evil energy has almost cultivated tens of thousands of vengeful ghosts.

There are thousands of vengeful ghosts here that could wreak havoc on an entire village if left outside!

The remaining ones, while not vengeful ghosts, are even less so.

Of course, what's even more troublesome is that the ghost realm and the mineral vein have been entangled for decades and are now inseparable, forming a formidable force that is difficult to eradicate easily. This is also the reason why the hundreds of monks and Taoists gathered here have been unable to come up with a solution for so long.

This thing would be a huge problem even hundreds of years ago, when the local deities were still scattered around. The City God would frown at it, and the Celestial Master would have a headache!

While everyone still possesses a solid foundation, their rudimentary skills make it difficult to manage.

Of course, there were ways, but those ways were difficult to articulate and even harder to implement. The next best option was artillery bombardment, but no one could give an accurate estimate of how much artillery would be effective. What they feared even more was that the commotion would be too great and disturb the Taihang Mountains. Zhuqianlin was already troublesome enough; if they were to alert some old troublemaker in the Taihang Mountains, things would become even more complicated...

Master Yiming had nowhere to confide his heavy heart, but fortunately, after seeing Zhang Wei, his prospective disciple, his originally depressed mood improved a lot!

Even if it's difficult to handle, there's always a way to deal with it. But finding such a talented closed-door disciple is not easy.

The old Taoist priest had come to deal with trouble. Anyway, his own sect had been almost completely destroyed before, so there was no point in leaving him alone. He originally planned to set up a big altar and fill the hole himself.

Who knows, by then I might accumulate a great deal of merit, and my already uncertain chance of achieving corpse liberation might be increased by another 30%.

But now, he doesn't really want to die!

People are happy when they are happy.

When the three people, one old, one middle-aged, and one young, arrived at the Pig Forest campsite, everyone was distributing tableware in preparation for dinner.

A familiar Taoist priest greeted him, "Uncle-Master Yiming, come quickly and get your lunchbox; it's time to eat!"

The moment the Taoist priest greeted him, Zhang Wei noticed that the already cheerful old Taoist's lips curled into a wider smile, and his eyes revealed an impatient eagerness: "Hey, do we have any extra lunchboxes here? Get one for my kid too!"

"A child? Where did you get a child? Although you're not a true immortal, I remember you don't seem to have a lover, do you?"

The Taoist priest, though puzzled, still took three more sets of tableware. As he walked over with his other Taoist friends, he began to scrutinize the two people, one big and one small, beside Master Yiming from a distance.

The more he looked, the more delighted he became!

But before they could rush forward, Daoist Yiming stretched out his hand and blocked the several filthy hooves: "What are you doing? Don't you have any manners? What if you scare the child? Can you take responsibility?"

"Hey! Uncle-Master, what are you saying? Let's just watch, we won't make a move!"

"Oh!"

The old Taoist priest smiled disdainfully, but still revealed Zhang Wei. He hadn't planned to keep his secret for bringing Zhang Wei up the mountain, and besides, based on the boy's behavior along the way, he didn't think the boy was someone who would break his promise. Now that he had met an acquaintance, he naturally wanted to show off: "You can look, but don't do anything. I've already told the boy that I'll find an opportunity to take him under my wing in a couple of days."

"This is the only heir in my lineage. If he dares to make a move, we'll open the altar and fight to the death right now!"

Master Yiming spoke to the Taoist priests who had gathered around, but his eyes were already fixed on the monks who were also eagerly waiting not far away.

The Taoists were not unaware of the situation, and besides, few of them were senior enough to surpass Master Yiming in seniority, and even if they were, they couldn't defeat him. So they all nodded calmly, simply to satisfy their curiosity.

Where did this child come from that could have stirred such worldly desires in this old ancestor?

But when he got closer and saw Zhang Wei, he couldn't help but gasp.

A full forehead, bright eyes, thick eyebrows shaped like the Big Dipper—just a glance at this face reveals all three blessings of fortune, prosperity, and longevity. Furthermore, the swirling blue light around the forehead, faintly emanating a scent of incense, indicates that the deity has taken notice of him. The hint of a hearth fire further suggests the presence of the Kitchen God.

After examining their faces, they stepped back two paces to look at their fortune. With just one close look, the Taoist priests felt a sharp pain in their eyes and gasped several times.

Despite the pain, he cursed Master Yiming mercilessly, both verbally and in his heart.

The old man, he's about to be buried in his coffin and he's had such incredible luck, it's infuriating!

Observing Qi is arguably the most frequently mentioned technique among many methods.

From the lowest level, like the blind fortune teller Wang, who considered observing qi and finding acupoints as his specialty, to the various lineages of Taoism in the Three Mountains, observing qi is one of the fundamental practices for entering the Buddhist lineage.

In layman's terms, it's fortune telling and face reading.

Since everyone here is from a legitimate Taoist lineage, they naturally wouldn't be lacking in physiognomy skills.

But they were all several hundred years old combined, and they had never seen anything so outrageous.

You are blessed with a long and prosperous life, good fortune, prosperity, and longevity. It's alright, there are at least 80,000 to 100,000 people like you on this earth.

Your forehead is adorned with incense smoke, a blessing from the gods. Okay, no problem. Although the various methods are not popular now, the foundation is still large, and we can always pick out some outstanding children. It's just that the incense smoke isn't as strong, but if you look carefully, you can still find some promising talents with auspicious stars in their destiny.

But what's going on with you, girl, having a fierce aura emanating from three feet above your head that makes you look so menacing?

What's wrong? You've already received the blessings of fortune, prosperity, and longevity, and the divine grace you're not satisfied with? You want a guardian beast too? Or how about I assign you a renowned teacher to guide you, and a divinely bestowed treasure?

Forget it, that's a bit too low-class. You might as well just chug a pot of Nine-Turn Golden Elixir and ascend to immortality. It's too beneath you to mingle with us mortals.

Of course, that's what they said, but actually everyone wasn't targeting Zhang Wei; they were just envious and sour about Old Daoist Ming's incredibly lucky luck.

This kind of luck, in the Tang and Song dynasties, would have made him a sure-fire candidate for immortality, carefully protected by the patriarch from the moment he was accepted into the sect. Even in the Yuan and Ming dynasties, he would have been a shoo-in for the underworld, a figure destined for deification after death.

As things stand now... the path to immortality is difficult, and the path to godhood is hopeless, but this child's dazzling appearance might actually give him a slight chance!

Failure is one thing, but what if success is another?

It's important to understand that for Taoists, the saying "when one person attains enlightenment, even their chickens and dogs ascend to heaven" is not just a myth!

Even if he can't compare to Master Xu, if he succeeds, the master can use this merit to ask the ancestral master to lend a hand and grant him a title.