From a Zhengyi Taoist Child to a Master of All Laws

Chapter 308 The World After

"A man in Taoist robes stood tall in the clouds.

He said, when there is a heavy rain,
As the words fell, the sea of ​​clouds in the mountains rose up and never fell.
The clouds were in the sky, meeting the mountains. The mountains were green, but the sky was dark.

The entire cloud layer was torn apart,
Heavy rain fell from the sky,

The following scene shows an endless and bustling crowd on the mountain and all around...

Millions of people, soaked in the rain, roaring like a tsunami."

In a daze, the scene repeated itself from the beginning...

"Zhuoma, don't get up yet. I have to go out."

This time, little Zhuoma did not see the end, because this time, she was called up by her mother, Tenzin Yuzhen.

With a startle, her whole body trembled, and Zhuoma opened her eyes on the bed.

Her forehead and back felt a little cool. She thought she was sweating from being covered in the wool blanket, so she raised her hand to touch it, but unfortunately there was nothing wrong. She just felt her body a little stiff.

Smelling the familiar smell of tsampa balls, Zhuoma slowly opened her eyes...

It was not the world she expected.
In front of her was still her familiar home and the familiar tent. Facing the foot of the bed were several Tibetan idols and picture books given by the government. Above the door lintel was a yak horn.
The stove was emitting smoke, and the butter tea on it was boiling, emitting a lot of dense foam.
It was December 12. More than three months had passed since the heavy rain in Longhu Mountain.

She got out of bed quickly, put on her clothes, and carefully scooped out a cup of water to wipe her red face from the wind and frost all day. Just as she was about to take the cooked tsampa ball, her mother, Tenzin Yuzhen, slapped her hand.

"Send one to the respected guest first."

"No, can't he get up and eat by himself?"

Zhuoma wanted to resist, but her mother stuffed a lunch box into her mouth and drove her out.
"They are guests. It is not reasonable for us to serve food to them after we have finished eating ourselves."

As soon as she stepped out of the tent, the blizzard like a knife blew towards her, causing little Zhuoma to shiver suddenly.

There are scriptures posted at the entrance of the tent, and "Mani flags" printed with scriptures are inserted in front of the door, fluttering in the wind.

This is December, the coldest and snowiest time of year in northern Tibet.

Little Dolma squinted her eyes on her round face. The sacred Mount Kailash in the distance was completely covered with ice and snow. The sky was filled with dark clouds, the cold wind was howling, and there was no sunlight at all.
From the perspective of Xiao Zhuoma, there is a huge vertical ice trough on the south side of the peak of Mount Kailash, which forms a "swastika" pattern in Buddhism with the horizontal rock layers.
In Tibetan, "Gang" means snow or snow mountain. Gang Rinpoche means "precious snow mountain" in Tibetan. It has a very special and lofty status in the hearts of people in the entire snow-covered area, just like a guru or living Buddha.

Little Zhuoma stood in the snow and prayed devoutly to the sacred mountain.

"May the snowstorm on the grassland pass soon, and may my mother and father be healthy and happy."

After praying, little Zhuoma sighed, "It would be great if Master Zhenjun could come to northern Tibet."

Just like on Mount Longhu, if the master could change the weather on this grassland, we wouldn’t have to endure this bad weather.
While muttering, Xiao Zhuoma braved the rolling snow and walked towards a tent.
On a grayish-white grassland with some green, Zhuoma wrapped her clothes tightly, and her mouth and nose were filled with white mist when she breathed.
She was going to deliver food to that strange guest.

A strange guest she picked up in the mountains,
Originally, this was just a "vagrant", a "poor man" who had lost his way. However, after this "vagrant" handed his mother a small stack of banknotes, this "vagrant" suddenly became the most precious guest of Zhuoma's family.
Not only was he treated extremely well, but he also had his tent and dried meat snatched away!
That was one of the few yak jerky, extremely rare, and I had only eaten a few pieces.
Little Zhuoma gritted her teeth, obviously a little angry.

The two tents are not far from each other because the shepherds need to take care of each other.
Entering the guest's tent, the firewood and cow dung were still burning inside the tent, and the quilt was neatly folded, but the strange guest was nowhere to be seen.

"gone?"

Little Zhuoma murmured, and just as she was about to express surprise, she saw the luggage of the guest beside the bed, and her face drooped again.
I walked out of the tent, holding the tsampa balls and butter tea, which were still warm, but the heat had dissipated a lot.
A line of extremely tiny footprints covered by ice and snow extended from the door of the tent to the depths of the grassland.

"Really? In this kind of weather, why don't you rest in the tent and run out? Aren't you afraid of getting lost again?"

After stamping her feet, Xiao Zhuoma thought for a long time, and finally put on her hat again and started to search along the footprints.
The snowstorm was heavy, the sky was filled with dark clouds and low pressure, the weather was gloomy, a line between heaven and earth separated the gray and green.

He guessed where the strange guest had gone.

As we went up the grassland, we found it extremely empty and desolate, with only a few tents still emitting smoke.

After following the footprints for more than ten minutes, little Zhuoma looked up and saw a prayer flag standing on a hill in the distance.
Square pieces of cloth in blue, white, red, green and yellow, printed with Buddha's teachings and bird and animal patterns, are sewn one piece at a time on a long rope and hung between two mountaintops. This type of prayer flag is commonly seen on sparsely populated mountains.

It is also a place that foreign tourists like to go to, take photos, check in, etc.

Sure enough, under the colorful strips of cloth, little Zhuoma saw a figure.
He seemed to be thinking, standing silently under the prayer flags. It seemed that he was the only one among the thousands of miles of grasslands and mountains, lonely and desolate.

After much effort, little Dolma finally climbed up the mountain and reached the prayer flags.
"Your name is Xiao Zhuoma, right?"

The guest standing in the snow seemed to see the panting little Zhuoma and asked with a smile,

"Why did you come to me?"

"Tashi Delek, this is the breakfast my mother asked you to bring to you!"

As Xiao Zhuoma spoke, she took out the packaged tsampa balls and butter tea from her arms.
Xiao Zhuoma had protected these very well along the way, and there was still a trace of heat left.
The guest was a very young Han youth. His skin was very different from the red skin of little Zhuoma, which had grown up in the snow and wind. His skin was so white that Zhuoma envied him.

Seeing the lunch box held high by little Zhuoma, the young guest smiled and said, "Did you come so far just to bring me breakfast?"

Little Zhuoma nodded: "My mother asked me to give it to you!"

As she spoke, little Zhuoma smelled the aroma of the tsampa balls and swallowed a mouthful of saliva involuntarily.
This detail was naturally noticed by the guests.

"I'm not hungry, you can eat."

The young guest smiled, turned around and continued to look at the grassland and mountains under the prayer flags.

"That won't work... You're not worried that our food is unhealthy, are you? I'll just eat with you."

Little Dolma played a trick so that her mother wouldn't say anything to her.

The guest did not refuse. Little Zhuoma ran to his side and opened the lunch box with great joy.

Tsampa balls are made from fried highland barley (a type of barley, available in white and purple-black colors) that is dried, fried, and ground into fine powder. Little Zhuoma took out the wooden bowl in her arms, poured the tsampa into the "Tanggu", added butter tea, and skillfully grasped the mouth of the bag with one hand and pinched it through the bag with the other hand. After a while, the fragrant tsampa was ready to eat.

When eating tsampa, Xiao Zhuoma likes to add some sugar and milk residue to it, which can make it more delicious and increase appetite.
"Brother, what would you like to add?"

"...Give me some lard."

"Row!"

Seeing little Dolma like this, the guest couldn't refuse anymore, so he leaned over and sat down on the prayer flag platform, and sat in a row with Dolma under the prayer flags.
When two people eat together, they will naturally chat about something.
"Dao League", "Spiritual Revival", "True Man", "Innate"

Some words that were originally very childish and strange became familiar to little Zhuoma, and they sounded very natural.

After chatting for a long time, the amount of tsampa that Xiao Zhuoma brought was gradually reduced by half.

"They all say that President Qi is the strongest in the Taoist Alliance, but I clearly feel that Taoist Priest Wu Peng is the strongest, okay? He can use thunderbolts, and he is so young and handsome."

"Last month, I heard that another innate master had made a breakthrough in Mount Wutai, and he had even been to our temple in northern Tibet before!"

"Hey, it seems that the Taoist temple will be recruiting students in a few months. Our Taoist temple in the snow area is in LS, thousands of miles away from us." Not many guests responded, and it was basically Xiao Zhuoma who spoke.
As she was talking, Xiao Zhuoma seemed to realize something and asked, "Your skin is so white, are you from Sichuan or Jiangxi?"

The young man nodded,
Little Zhuoma's eyes lit up: "Have you ever met Li Zhenjun, or Taoist Priest Wu Peng and the others?"

But as soon as she finished speaking, Xiao Zhuoma regretted it.

Such a frail young man could get lost in the mountains without any friends. He probably didn't do well in the outside world. How could he have met such a person?

Unexpectedly, this strange guest nodded.

"seen"

After a pause, he added: "More than once."

Little Zhuoma was a little shocked, and then a little suspicious: "Zaxi Delek, is it true? Where did you see him?"

"Longhu Mountain, Qingcheng Mountain."

"Have you ever met Li Zhenjun? I heard that many people in the north and several provinces in the south are looking for him, and they are almost going crazy!"

The young man just smiled and didn't answer.

In the eyes of little Zhuoma, this gesture seemed to indicate that this strange guest had just lied. She frowned, thought for a moment, and then took out a photo from an old flip phone and showed it to him.

"Do you know who this man is?"

The young man glanced at him strangely and shook his head: "I don't know him."

Little Zhuoma jumped up and said, "Okay, I knew you were lying! You said you've seen Li Zhenjun, but you can't even recognize him in the photo!"

"how is this possible?"

This time the customer was a little surprised and took the phone to look at it carefully.

His eyes quickly turned away and then back again.

Suddenly looking at a certain place and stopping...

In the photo, a small building of about five or six floors appears in the center of the photo. In northern Tibet, this can be considered a tall building.

This in itself was nothing. He had seen many buildings before. What made him freeze in place was the wall of that small building.

A whole wall.

The wall that extended down from the roof was covered with a huge portrait.

The person in the portrait is standing tall, with his hands clasped together, and his face showing a firm and compassionate expression.

The photo is surrounded by rising clouds and ferocious snakes.
He was wearing a flowing Taoist robe, and on his shoulders was a ferocious, blue-glowing sword and a bright moon.

If this is not enough to identify the person, there is another line of words on the right side of the portrait:

【Come, join us and seek the immortality with Li Zhenjun. 】

This turned out to be the recruitment poster of the Snow District Taoist Temple!
The strange guest was a little confused.
He didn't remember ever dressing like this or having such an expression in his eyes. Even the figure and appearance of the person in the portrait had some subtle differences from his self-image.

It was as if that was not him, but someone with a similar appearance.

“Where did you take this?”

"The county town!" Seeing the expression on the guest's face, Xiao Zhuoma became more suspicious.
"Too fake."

"What's so fake?"

"This photo is so fake." The young man sighed, "How come they even gave me double eyelids, whitened my skin, smoothed my face, and made me taller... And aren't they afraid of being sued for stealing their portrait rights?"

"You're talking nonsense, this is obviously Li Zhenjun!"

Xiao Zhuoma was a little anxious. This guy actually made up stories about her idol in front of her.
The guest certainly didn't lie to him.

Because it is impossible for Li Zhenjun not to recognize Li Zhenjun,

Li Yang smiled and said, "Perhaps the real Li Zhenjun is not as perfect as you think!"

"At least they won't let you get lost in the mountains! When I dug you out of Mount Kailash, the snow was so thick!"

Hearing this, Li Yang was a little speechless, and smiled: "I said, I am not lost, but traveling along the way."

"I went north along the Yangtze River to find its source, tracing it back to the main peak of the Tanggula Mountains, the Geladandong Great Ice Peak, and also went to the southern foot of the Black Ridge Mountain in the Hoh Xil Mountains. Later, I entered the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, crossed the Tanggula Mountains, and went up the Yarlung Zangbo River. It took me several months..."

"That's not right. Then why did I dig you out from Mount Kailash?"

Little Zhuoma looked suspicious and recalled the scene of that day.
It was a particularly snowy day, with clouds over Mt. Kailash so dark that it was almost impossible to open your eyes. Every step you took was covered in snow up to your knees.
There was no human habitation, no signs of life, the entire mountain was covered in snow and a white mass of dust.
Then little Zhuoma found him. Under the ice and snow, his body had no body temperature at all. She dug him out from the snow with great difficulty.

We brought him back to the tent on a yak and thought he was dead. We boiled several kettles of hot water but it didn't work to loosen his joints. Who would have thought that he would suddenly come back to life the next day?

Li Yang's face was dark. "I came all the way west from the Potala Palace in Lhasa, and when I arrived at your place, I was meditating in the snow. Who would have thought that you dug me up and brought me back?"

"How is that possible! In this weather, LS is several days' drive away from us. Even the most experienced herders can't get there!"

“I’m not a herder.”

"Are you a monk?"

"It is."

"What state are you in?"

Li Yang didn't answer.

"Inducing Qi, awakening the spirit, innate?"

Seeing that Li Yang was still shaking his head, Xiao Zhuoma seemed to have thought of something. She looked incredible and at a loss: "Could it be that you are a Taoist?"

"No."

Well, now Xiao Zhuoma can be sure that this guy is definitely a liar. He didn't do his homework well and didn't even know the realm of cultivation. He just shook his head.
"Then what are you doing here? You are climbing Mount Kailash without knowing your own limitations."

Li Yang paused, his eyes wandering, then he stood up and looked at the sacred mountain rising from the ground in the distance.

There is a vast expanse of snow there now.
"Do you know that there is a place called 'Shambhala' on Mount Kailash?"

(End of this chapter)