Confucian and Taoist Cultivation Starting from the Equipment Slot

Xu Yi closed his folding fan and announced a number that made most of the people present gasp in shock.

Five hundred taels of silver was enough for an ordinary family to live comfortably for ten years during this long, dark period of lockdown when supplies were scarce.

Wanyan Liang subconsciously touched the four characters "Wealthy beyond measure" on his folding fan, and suddenly felt that these words were a bit too hot to handle in today's occasion.

The stall owner's eyes visibly flickered.

In that instant, Chen Zhuo saw his Adam's apple bob once, and his fingers grip the edge of the stall table tightly.

But he still shook his head: "I would like to ask for a poem."

Xu Yi stopped folding his fan.

For a moment or two, he simply stared at the stall owner, as if trying to confirm whether the man was serious.

Then he unfolded the folding fan again, tapped it lightly twice in his palm, and suddenly smiled:

"Interesting. These days, some people don't want five hundred taels of silver, they want a poem instead."

The audience suddenly fell silent.

The fact that the stall owner couldn't be swayed even by five hundred taels of silver silenced the onlookers.

Xu Yi closed his folding fan, tapped it against his palm, turned to face the crowd surrounding the stall, and said loudly:

"Gentlemen, since this stall owner is using poetry as a bargaining chip, I, Xu, will offer a prize."

"Everyone present, regardless of status or level of cultivation, will receive five taels of silver each for composing a poem on the theme of 'stone,' good or bad, to be settled on the spot. A more substantial reward will be given for any outstanding work."

As soon as Xu Yi finished speaking, Wanyan Liang immediately took out a stack of silver notes from his pocket and neatly arranged them on the corner of the table.

The hall fell silent for a moment.

Then, like a drop of water splashing into a pot of oil, it exploded all around at once.

For many present, five taels of silver represented their only hope—to have their heirloom gemstone appraised.

Now, you can get a reward simply by writing a poem, good or bad.

In the corner, some people had already started chewing on their pen holders, not their own, but those borrowed from the stalls next door.

People outside the teahouse, hearing the news, also squeezed in, causing the door panels to creak and groan as they were bumped.

Chen Zhuo saw the stall owner's gaze shift between Xu Yi and Chen Zhuo for a moment before landing on the stack of silver notes on the corner of the table, and he swallowed hard.

But he did not change his mind.

The first to submit his manuscript was a burly man dressed in a coarse cloth tunic, whose handwriting was crooked and illegible, and the paper was the back of a torn account book.

"The stone is hard and black, it hurts a bit when you hit it, but what is it used for? To build walls and protect our homes."

The onlookers burst into laughter.

The soldier scratched his head, accepted the five taels of silver, and smiled to himself.

Over the next half hour, one after another, refugees from the outer city, students from the academy, peddlers on the street, and soldiers of the Qingshan Army who were on duty guarding the city brought their poems to the exhibition stand.

Some people wrote "stone" as "right", some rhymed haphazardly, some wrote doggerel, and some copied half of a previous poem to make up the numbers.

Xu Yi kept his word, and Wanyan Liang distributed silver notes one by one. When the silver notes ran out, he used loose silver instead.

But all the poems were hung one by one on the rope behind the display stand, and none of them were taken down.

Chen Zhuo stood in the crowd, looking through the poems one by one.

He saw someone who didn't know many characters, yet wrote in crooked handwriting, "The stone is like my father's hand, hard and rough, but it supported me as I grew up."

Someone wrote that after the long night, new stone blocks were laid on the city walls, "each one a name."

Some people write that the stones of the green hills bury the bones of the warriors of the previous dynasty, "There is iron in the stone, and blood in the iron."

They are not intellectuals.

They simply used the theme of "stone" during this special period when demons and monsters were lurking around, to pour out things that they couldn't usually say.

Good poetry is sometimes not written, but forced out.

Just then, the poem on the display stand, which no one had ever written about, suddenly lit up slightly.

It wasn't literary flair or literary skill, but a resonance that surged from the hearts of dozens of people present at the same time.

The resonance had not yet taken shape, but it was already floating in the air.

Chen Zhuo sensed it.

He looked around and saw that Xu Yi had also sensed it.

The two exchanged a glance, both seeing a tacit understanding in each other's eyes.

This "assigned topic" inadvertently created a miniature space where words resonate with the world.

So many people are using "stone" as a theme and thinking about its meaning at the same time. Their thoughts collide, overlap, and resonate with each other on the same word.

Although it is not enough to directly invoke the written characters of heaven and earth, it is already sufficient.

Whoever can write a masterpiece that truly resonates with these sentiments in this time and place will likely evoke a response from the very words of heaven and earth.

Xu Yi didn't wait any longer.

He strode to the center of the hall, slapped his folding fan against his palm, and said loudly:

"Bring me my pen and ink!"

Before he finished speaking, the brush was already suspended in mid-air, its tip fully exposed, and the entire brush was supported by a layer of pale golden literary energy, hovering steadily at his right hand.

He didn't use a table; the brush and ink hovered in mid-air, and then he began to write:

"A single stone stands majestically against the vast sky amidst the green hills..."

He wrote his characters in a hurry, leaving only a trail of dazzling gold in the air.

After the poem was completed, the character "stone" flashed across the paper, and a faint aura of the characters of heaven and earth emanated from the paper.

It wasn't a complete resonance, but it did touch the boundary of the character "stone".

The audience gasped in amazement.

Xu Yi stared at the gradually dimming character "stone," remained silent for a moment, then shook his head, tore off the page of the poem, and casually placed it on the corner of the table.

He did write it, but he knew it was just a superficial resonance, not a genuine connection.

That wasn't what he wanted most.

Chen Zhuo did not look at the poem manuscript that Xu Yi had torn out.

He had already walked to the front of the booth and placed the stone with the pressed corner he had bought earlier next to the water-patterned green mountain stone he had won in the auction.

He looked down at them.

It's not about the price, the quality, or what they can produce.

He was looking at them in their most basic form, a crooked stone used to weigh down the corner of a cloth.

A stone with bluish-gray water patterns on its shell, sealed underground for who knows how many years.

They are not pretty, not rare, and worthless if they don't yield any treasures.

But they are hard, stable, and heavy enough.

They were pressed deep within the strata of the green mountains for thousands of years. After being dug out, they were thrown into a corner of the stall to continue pressing cloth. They did not change, they did not break, they were still the same stones.

Everyone was watching to see what they could find inside the stone.

He was thinking about what the stone itself was.

He suddenly remembered a few lines he had read in a book before, which were among his favorite poems from his previous life.

But at this moment he hesitated, not because it wasn't good enough, but because it was too good.

It was so good that he dared not easily bring it into this world.

But at this moment, looking at these stones in front of him, and at the people of the outer city who had been oppressed by the long night year after year, he felt that if there was a poem worthy of them, it would be Yu Qian's "Ode to Limestone".

"Lend me a pen."