Confucian and Taoist Cultivation Starting from the Equipment Slot

In addition, there are some of his own insights and feelings.

While it's enough to simply transplant the classics from the original world, he still needs to have his own ideas.

Everything from our predecessors can only be taken as lessons learned; the real focus is still on ourselves.

When he wrote it, he did not deliberately exaggerate the heroic spirit, but only embedded some bitterness between the lines that outsiders could understand.

Long nights of lack of supplies, displaced people from outlying cities, and a group of ordinary people who are determined to hold on to the end.

After finishing all three works, he handed them over to Tong Yue, keeping only one copy of the manuscript.

When Tong Yue received the poem, he remained silent for a long time before putting it away and saying, "Young Master Chen, these stones are yours."

Chen Zhuo transported the raw stones back to the Chen residence in batches, but did not cut them open immediately.

What he needs most right now is information on the mineral veins.

He scanned the rough stones with the panel and found one white and one green rough stone.

The descriptions on the panel are identical except for the quality.

[Qingshan Stone: Due to unknown reasons, a certain structure hidden underground underwent a transformation, and some elements were trapped within the original stone, forming Qingshan Stone.]

"Some kind of building? An unknown anomaly?"

Chen Zhuo paused for a moment when he saw those two words.

What ancient buildings are there at the foot of Qingshan Mountain? Could there have been a glorious civilization here in ancient times?

The phrase "the world changes like the sea turning into mulberry fields" immediately popped into Chen Zhuo's mind.

……

Inside Song Zhiyuan's study at Qingshan Academy.

Song Zhiyuan sat behind his desk, holding a half-cold cup of tea in his hand.

The night sky outside the window was still a deep, dark black.

The golden light of the Righteous Qi Array flashed once every few breaths at the edge of the barrier.

He looked down at the scroll of Qingshan County Annals spread out on the table, turned to the page that recorded ancient mineral veins, and found that the edges of the page were already frayed.

He had been flipping through this county gazetteer for ten years, and the creases on every page were as familiar as the lines on his own palm.

Suddenly, spatial fluctuations appeared around him. Song Zhiyuan subconsciously wanted to interrupt, but then he sensed that it was the aura of his eldest disciple.

As expected, Zhao Xuelang's figure slowly emerged in front of him.

She wasn't wearing her usual neat short outfit today; instead, she wore a dark gray robe with stone powder on the cuffs, as if she had just rushed back from somewhere.

"Master! We've found a clue about what you asked me to find!"

Zhao Xuelang's voice was filled with barely suppressed excitement!

She took out a stone.

It was about the size of a fist, with a dark gray outer shell, and had been neatly cut in half with a sharp tool.

The chalcedony on the cut surface was not the usual grayish-white waste, but a very pale blue color.

A stone shard is embedded in the darkest part of the blue color. Its texture is distinctly different from the surrounding chalcedony. It is heavier and denser, and its surface has faint, inscription-like patterns.

"The clue is hidden in this rock!"

Song Zhiyuan's teacup stopped in mid-air.

He glanced at his eldest disciple, then placed the teacup on the corner of the table and solemnly picked up the half stone.

His fingers brushed across the cut surface of the blue chalcedony, and when they touched the stone shard embedded in the core, his fingertips trembled violently.

A very subtle fluctuation of literary energy emanated from the stone slab, so faint as to be almost imperceptible, yet it was undeniably present.

That was not the aura of ordinary literary and artistic objects, but a more ancient, primal rhythm.

"Where did you get this from?" Song Zhiyuan's voice was filled with barely concealed excitement.

He recognized that aura all too well; it was the aura of ancient ruins! The clue to the ruins he had been searching for for ten years had finally appeared!

"Qingshan Stone Association," Zhao Xuelang said. "After the long night lockdown, supplies in the outer city were scarce, and many people brought their family heirloom jade for appraisal, hoping to get lucky and exchange it for food."

Someone brought a piece of ancestral green mountain stone to open, and after splitting it open, they discovered this stone fragment.

Everyone present just thought it was an ordinary stone, and no one made a bid, so I bought it without hesitation.

"Who was the one who took out the stone?" Song Zhiyuan's voice was a little tense.

"Old Liu from the blacksmith shop in the outer city. He said that this stone was passed down from his grandfather. When he was working at the Qingshan Mine, the mine owner gave his grandfather a few pieces of poor-quality slag."

His grandfather found the stone cool to the touch in the summer, so he placed it under his pillow as a cooling pillow for over twenty years, a practice passed down through three generations.

Zhao Xuelang paused here, looked at Song Zhiyuan's expression, and added the last sentence:

"Old Liu said that his grandfather used to work for the Tongxin Alliance mining team."

Song Zhiyuan remained silent for a moment, then turned the stone over to look at the other side.

The engravings on the other side are deeper and the wear is more severe, with only a few broken strokes vaguely discernible.

He infused his literary energy into the stone slab with utmost gentleness and slowness, and the engravings shone slightly under the influence of the energy.

In less than half a breath, the outline of a fragmented ancient character appeared: "启".

What does "启" mean? Does it mean "to open" or "to reveal"? Or is it a prefix for some ancient place name or title?

The light was fleeting.

The stone slab returned to its somber, gray state, as if the brief flash of light had been nothing more than an illusion.

Song Zhiyuan found that his fingers, which were holding the stone slab, were trembling.

It wasn't fear, it wasn't tension, but rather an emotion that had been suppressed for too long and suddenly found an outlet, surging out uncontrollably.

Ten years ago, when he left Shengtianfu, Mr. Wenxiang asked him in front of everyone:

"You claim Dongshi Region is the origin of literature and Taoism, where's your evidence?"

He stood at the foot of the lecture platform at the Imperial Academy, in front of all his fellow students, unable to utter a single word.

It wasn't stage fright; he genuinely had no evidence.

He had only deductions, only intuition, and only a bunch of ancient fragments that seemed far-fetched to others.

Now this half-finger-wide stone slab lies in his palm.

The engravings on it are marks left by the ancients, earlier than the First Emperor and the Zhou Dynasty. They were buried deep in the stone layers of this land and passed down as a worthless cool pillow by three generations.

"This thing..." Zhao Xuelang hesitated before speaking, "is it really related to that prophecy?"

Song Zhiyuan carefully placed the stone slab back onto the cut surface, and the two halves of the stone fit together perfectly, wrapping the stone slab once again in the center of the blue chalcedony.

He stood up, pushed the teacup aside, and spread out the Qingshan County Gazetteer, which he had almost worn out from flipping through it, on the corner of the table. He pointed to the point where the ancient mineral distribution map and the current outer city area overlapped.

"Old Liu's grandfather worked for the Tongxin Alliance's mining team. The mineral vein that the Tongxin Alliance mined back then is the area I marked."

The stone flakes were found within the Qingshan stone, which is only found in this particular vein.

He raised his head, his gaze sweeping across his eldest disciple's face. His voice was not loud, but every word carried the weight of ten years of suppressed emotion.

"This stone fragment is not an isolated piece of evidence. When I left Shengtian Prefecture, I was all alone. It is very likely that the extension of this mineral vein is buried beneath Qingshan County."

The entrance to the ancient ruins should be at some point along the vein's course; the direction is correct!

"Don't spread this information for now."

"Take care of Liu Laotie's side and make arrangements without making a fuss. Find all the old miners who went down the mine with the Tongxin Alliance back then and talk to them privately."

"We buy all the broken stones they stuff under their pillows, on the roof beams, and under the stove at high prices."

"That's not waste material, it's historical material."