As soon as he finished speaking, we saw a thin old man walking towards us with his hands clasped, with two tigers behind him, one on the left and one on the right, like bodyguards.

I saw that the old man was dressed very strangely. He was wearing a black robe. He was neither a monk nor a Taoist, nor did he look like the clothes worn by ordinary people at home. He had a long braid on his head, but it was black and shiny, and he looked very energetic. His face was clear and red.

She is shiny, has bright eyes, has a long beard hanging down her chest, and seems to have some fairy spirit with her.

"Haha, it turns out that the general has arrived. I missed the welcome. Please forgive me!" The old man bowed his hands and saluted, smiled calmly, and was not surprised at all by our group of uninvited guests. It seemed that the swords and guns in our hands were not bloodletting.

The deadly murder weapons are fire sticks and cattle whips, and they are ignored.

In any case, the other party is at least in human form, and he is a polite old man. He is at least much better than the poisonous insects, beasts, evil monsters and monsters we imagined.

But how could those two man-eating tigers obey him so obediently?

"I'm really sorry for disturbing the old man's Qing Dynasty. How can he be called a general when he is just a soldier? You are too polite, old man!" As the battalion commander, Boss Liu had to line up and salute with his hands clasped in fists. "Dare you ask me, old man?"

What do you call it and why do you live here?”

Looking at the old man's clothes, he is neither a monk nor a Taoist, nor a Confucian scholar, nor a businessman. Apart from calling him "Old Mr.", I really don't know of any other more appropriate title. And what Mr. Liu asked is exactly what we want.

Knowing his name and why he is here is equivalent to knowing whether he is a human, a demon or something else!

"Haha, I call myself a escapist. I was born in the Qing Dynasty. I fled here when the world changed. I don't know how many years it has been!" The old man seemed to have seen through the world and was indifferent to life and death. He let us sit on the ground and talked very cordially.

He got up and said that he hadn't seen the same kind of people for many years, and he was very happy to hear what humans had to say.

It turned out that the old man claimed to have escaped from the world and said that he was born in the third year of Xianfeng of Emperor Wenzong of the Qing Dynasty, which was the Guichou year of the lunar calendar. If converted to the Western calendar, it should be 1853.

At that time, his family was quite prosperous, with a large business and no worries about food and clothing. However, he was obsessed with secular affairs, did not manage land, and was indifferent to fame and fortune in the world. He was bohemian and disliked official career. He wanted to get rid of the trivial matters in the world all day long, but was obsessed with cultivation and enlightenment.

Desire for immortality.

Later, after searching various sects and studying Buddhist scriptures, he came to believe that they were all fallacies: Buddhism called for ginseng meditation and Nirvana; Taoism advocated gathering yin to replenish yang and keeping the furnace to make elixirs. These were all misleading fallacies. He had been practicing hard for many years.

,arrive

At first, I couldn't stand the way of Buddhism and Confucianism, and I saw that the world was in a bleak state, with the rivers declining day by day, and people becoming kings in the morning and dying in the evening. So I started to explore the path of spiritual practice on my own, traveling around the world, visiting experts, immersing myself in ancient books, and studying metaphysics.

After many years, he finally learned a lot. He learned a lot of things, such as astronomy and geography, Qimen Dunjia, looking at cattle and dogs, observing yin and yang in caves, pushing back pictures and horses, etc. What is even more strange is that he actually combined them.

Based on my own understanding, I found a set of methods to subdue tigers and subdue dragons from the ancient books "The Classic of Mountains and Seas" and "The Spring and Autumn Period of Controlling Beasts". Most of the various beasts in the world can be driven by it.

By the third year of Xuantong in the Qing Dynasty, which was the year of the Revolution of 1911, he became even more disenchanted with the secular world and accidentally escaped into this "tiankeng".

Boss Liu once asked him: "Since you are a monk and practice, why not find a place with famous mountains and rivers? Why do you call this Bailing Valley a tiankeng?"

That said, the famous mountain monks in the world have all been occupied, and there are Taoist temples to divide them up! What's more, they and I have different Taoism and are not neighbors. They climbed up the mountain, and I stooped down to the ground, and happened to encounter this place that has been inaccessible for thousands of years.

Although the deep valley is not big, it is extremely deep, completely natural, warm in winter and cool in summer, like a big pit, and people have lived down here!

After listening to the self-report of his life experience, we all sighed. Even if he is not a god or an immortal, he can be called an ancient and strange person. But the strangest thing is that after some communication, his views on good and evil have become even more profound.

Very different from the world!

Shi Shi believes that good is not good and evil is not evil. Nothing is evil but good and nothing good is not evil! The so-called good and evil are just different positions and numbers! For example, these two tigers around him, I raise them with great kindness, and I am very kind to them.

For Erhu, I am doing good deeds, but for other beasts, because

If the two tigers must eat meat and drink blood to survive, I am doing evil, and vice versa; take the "Ten Days of Yangzhou" and the "Three Massacres of Jiading" that the world is gnawing at, for example, the Qing soldiers drank a lot of blood with their swords and suffered numerous casualties themselves.

The people of the two cities were massacred, and there were many others who were killed at the beginning.

If it’s still hard to understand, let’s take yourselves as an example. Killing Dongyang and rescuing the people is good, but killing tens of thousands of people can never stop the war. For countless undead, it is evil. The laws of heaven are cyclical, and good and evil are hard to come by.

Say! So Lao Tzu once said, the heaven and the earth are not benevolent, and regard all things as stupid dogs; the saints are unkind, and regard the common people as stupid dogs. Between the heaven and the earth, it is like a proverb? It is empty but unyielding, and the more it moves, the more it comes out. It is not as good as hearing that the number is poor.

Keep the center

He avoids the world and talks about some specious truths that are incomprehensible to ordinary people. Although we admire his deep thinking and originality and his ability to control animals, we cannot agree with his views. Our trip is to get rid of that yellow-skinned man who is harmful to others.

, we didn’t come to discuss scriptures and Taoism with him, so after he finished speaking, we proposed the purpose of our trip.

Unexpectedly, the Bishi actually smiled and said, I have long expected that you people would come here for any reason, armed with sharp blades and guns, and wanted to cause trouble for that fellow Huang Daoist, so he expressed his view in advance that good and evil are uncertain, and neither

Even if they try to stop us, they won't help us. But for the sake of being human beings, we are told that if we want to get rid of that yellow-skinned man, we must go through three levels and get rid of the three beasts.

At this moment, our good impression of the old man suddenly disappeared! Damn it, why do we have to go through so much trouble to get rid of that harmful little thing? And we have weapons and guns in hand, why do we care about the three levels and three beasts around you?

Two tigers, if it weren't for your sake, we would have shot them to death!

The old man seemed to have read through our thoughts and smiled calmly: "I think you may have misunderstood. The three gates and three beasts are not the entrance gates set up by me to deliberately make things difficult for you. They are the Taoist friend Huang Taixian who has practiced hard for hundreds of years and learned good and evil."

Conceited, although he cannot cultivate the Taoism, his spirituality has not been lost and his good roots are still there, so he will not die unexpectedly. These three levels and three beasts are actually created by heaven and earth, and are not done by manpower."

Hearing what he said, we were very surprised. If what he said is true, these three levels and three beasts must be no small matter. Of course Mr. Liu understood it, and immediately bowed and saluted and asked: "Mr., you misunderstood, we meant to get rid of them."

Why does a harmful yellow man have to go through three levels and three beasts? What are those three levels and three beasts?"

The reclusive old man pondered for a moment and said in a low voice, "There is neither good nor evil, nor evil nor good. Since we are destined to meet each other, I will tell you the truth!"

It turned out that this Bailing Valley must have been discovered by many people over thousands of years, but none of them was spared. They were buried in the valley, and the dots of will-o'-the-wisps at the bottom of the valley were evidence of this. When he came down, he discovered that this sinkhole was

Inside, there are many kinds of monsters and beasts that have never been seen or heard of before.

Fortunately, he has not been engaged in worldly pursuits all his life, and he is well aware of the habits of beasts. In addition, he has read countless ancient books, and then he realized that some of the strange beasts recorded in the "Shan Hai Jing" were actually hiding here and isolated from the world.

When Sima Qian of the Han Dynasty wrote "Historical Records", he also believed: "As of the "Benji of Yu", all the monsters in "The Classic of Mountains and Seas" are beyond words."

Sima Qian wrote "Historical Records" based on facts. He did not dare to say whether there were strange beasts that he had never seen before. He did not expect to encounter them here. It was a great blessing.

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Chapter completed!