My Daoist Life

Although the children on one hand would cry wanting to watch, on the other hand, they would cry while watching. Rare were the children who were not afraid of ghosts. Even though I was a Daoist, I was still at an age where I would tremble with fear. On the nights after watching ghost movies, I would only be able to sleep after covering myself in sheets. However, the next day in the night, would still sit up to watch the next episode of that broadcast.

A sign that was written on the zombie’s face made me quite interested, didn’t it somewhat look like those seal script characters that I write? The seal script character ‘雷’ written by me, with possession of spiritual charm, can trigger thunder and lightning, the seal script character ‘风’ was able to naturally give birth to wind. The seal script character ‘水’ written by me, was able to trigger moisture in a localized area. The seal script character ‘火’ written by me, was surprisingly able to transform into a raging conflagration. Did these characters written by me have any connection with my bronze medal? If a person is much more accomplished in cultivation, then would he be able to bring out much greater effect from these seal script characters?….

A lot of questions circled in my mind, but I wasn’t able to comprehend a solution for these issues. On New year’s eve, my parents called home, and spoke a few words to me, and after saying that telephone charges are too high, hastily hung up the phone. Their voices had already become fuzzy within my memory. Unexpectedly, my younger brother wanted very much to talk to me, but only he spoke in Mandarin, while I spoke in the Ba Jiao village dialect, and my younger brother wasn’t able to understand what I was saying, and very quickly the phone was s.n.a.t.c.hed by my parents.

Grandpa gave the yuan that he was holding to the village branch secretary lady, and then turned back home while pulling me along.

“Yang Yang, what do you want to eat for New Year? Grandpa will buy it for you.” Grandpa asked.

“Grandpa, we already have things at home.” I was feeling bitter in my heart, I didn’t really have motivation for anything.

At this moment, the people from the village had started setting off fireworks. Every now and then, fireworks beautifully blossomed in the sky.

“Yang Yang, we’ll also go release fireworks.” Grandpa patted me on my shoulder.

The fireworks bought by Grandpa and I weren’t as big as other people’s, also they didn’t go up as high. However, as far as I was concerned, it was already a luxury for the final new year celebration.

I quickly ran back and brought back a tube-shaped firework. Grandpa took a puff from the tobacco pipe and then helped me ignite the fireworks. Immediately thereafter, a white smoke starting coming out from the paper tube, and before long, the fireworks rushed out from the tube, heading towards the sky and finally, a *bang* could be heard as the fireworks exploded, and a beautiful multicoloured flower bloomed in the sky.

While I was setting off the fireworks, my thoughts were running in a far away place. I was thinking that if I take the seal script character 火 (Fire) and use primordial qi to control it, and then use the seal script character 风 (Wind) to control the 火 character and keep it floating in the air, then when the 火 is made to explode, would it not be similar to these fireworks?

The firework tube in my hand had finished, but I was already no longer interested in continuing.

“What happened? Don’t you want to play?” Grandpa asked very surprised.

“I don’t want to play. Let’s save some for tomorrow.” I said while smiling.

Grandpa nodded, he also had a lot of work to do. At once he busily went about to do his work. Then, I ran to the open area next to the house, and straightaway used my finger to write the seal script character 火 (Fire) in the air. This 火 character unexpectedly remained floating in the air. The character 火 was composed entirely of primordial qi. I could feel that this 火 character was able to understand my thoughts, but when it came to moving this 火 character according to my will, it was still extremely difficult.

I once again began writing in the air, this time the seal script character 风 (Wind), the 风 character, just like 火, remained floating in the air in front of me, but the 风 was somewhat different, it was drifting in the air erratically. However, even so it was also capable of being interlinked with my thoughts. Suddenly, the 风 and 火 characters collided together. All of a sudden, the 火 character began burning like a fiercely raging flame, and very soon thereafter exploded.

Hong!

An intense blast of wind threw me onto the ground, I had almost succeded in becoming the first daoist cultivator to die at the hands of his own dao technique. Fortunately, I am a person at the stage of Foundation establishment, with an agile body and possessing sharp reactions. This was already quite extraordinary compared to a normal person. At the moment when the explosion occurred, I was already in the middle of dodging, only it was somewhat late, and I was thrown back flying all the way. Flying through the dried paddy fields rolling several times, while chewing on several rice straws that had made their way into my mouth, however it didn’t matter one bit.

When 火 and 风 collided together, an explosion had occurred and several tens of feet above in the sky, suddenly an extremely beautiful flower burst forth in the sky, staying in the sky for no less than 2-3 minutes.

In the entire village, a lot of people had seen this scene. They all thought that our family had set off a new variety of firework, not really expecting that this was me experimenting with Daoist techniques.

On the first day of the lunar new year, my cla.s.smate, the big fatty cla.s.smate Huang Shulang was panting as he came running to our house, and shouting out a loud new year’s greeting, and at once ran to my house’s room in the front, then back of the room, trying to search everywhere.

“Bark Bark Bark!” Black Bean thought that cla.s.smate Huang Shulang was up to no good.

Huang Shulang jumped in fright from Black Bean.

“Huang Jingyang, you are still not calling back your dog. If he bites me, then your family will have to pay compensation.”

I laughed happily: “Who let you sneak around in our house, he must have been thinking that you were trying to steal something?”

“My father is a butcher, our family has a lot of money, everyday we have meat to eat. Why would I have a need to steal something from your house? I want to see which brand of firework that you set off last night, our family wants to buy the same for next year.” Huang Shulang said.

I took out the fireworks bought by us for Huang Shulang to see, “Here, all are here.”

“Not this one, it was that big firework that stayed in the air for several minutes. It made a nice loud noise, and it looked just as amazing as those fireworks shown on television. No, rather it was even more amazing than the fireworks shown in the TV. Fireworks shown in the TV also cannot remain in the year for such a long amount of a time. This is definitely a new technology.” Speaking of Huang Shulang, although one wouldn’t be able to tell even one bit, he was the resident last-ranker of our cla.s.s. He didn’t flunk cla.s.s but remained the first person from the last in cla.s.s rankings. When he dropped to our cla.s.s, he was unexpectedly still capable of holding onto the position of first person from the bottom, enabling the teachers and students both to have a fresh outlook on life.

“There are no others, just this one. How would my family have enough money to buy big fireworks?” I naturally knew that what the fatty was talking about was my final “firework”, but this thing, I naturally couldn’t disclose. If I speak of it, would the villagers still not take me as a monster?

Since I had experienced matters that others weren’t capable of even imagining, I had to be much more deliberate and thoughtful compared to my peers.

“Impossible, everybody in the village saw it! Those flowers were so beautiful. I have grown so big, but have never seen fireworks as attractive as these, such a pity it was only once.” Huang Shulang said with a sigh, his eyes were full of longing.

However, this thing I won’t speak about, Fatty you can just hide your intoxication once and for all.

The people in the village also continued to talk about this, they first thought that the fireworks had been set off by our family, but later they realised thought that these kinds of fireworks were definitely not possible to have been sold in the the town, and even if there were sellers, my family wouldn’t have had the money to buy. So, it was impossible for this firework to have been set off by my family. Later on, all the children in the village came to our house to inspect and verify the spot, confirming that indeed our family had not set it off, because each one was able to find only the firework of the paper tube type.

Since the possibility of fireworks being set off had been excluded, the possibilities that remained were somewhat mysterious. The elders of our village said, that for something to be capable of appearing like a bright firework, it certainly wouldn’t be simple. It’s possible that that place has some sort of a treasure. When treasures are unearthed, visions appear. This time everyone suspected that this fireworks phenomenon was due to the jewel light coming from the unearthing of a treasure.

Certainly it was also possible that there was no treasure unearthed, and was rather the mischief of an evildoer. This theory also had comparable takers, a lot of people in the village treated my circ.u.mstances of not speaking for two years continuously to be unusually profound and mysterious. Everyone said that the ‘feng shui’ of our house was not good, just now such a thing happened. This time also such kind of a marvel appeared, which so happened to verify the villagers point of view. My family’s residence had probably been affiliated to inauspicion.

Certainly, someone who has read a few books, or has received benefit of culture, would think that those aforesaid two kinds of opinions were just feudalistic superst.i.tions. One must emphasize science. They believe that this must be a wildfire, or possibly a methane gas combustion, and thus, there was no need to make a fuss about nothing.

This last explanation didn’t have many takers. Although wildfire was terrifying, it didn’t seem to match with what people saw on the new year’s eve. Even if there were methane gas underground, it definitely couldn’t appear like fireworks upon combustion.