Day and night tour

Chapter 54 Divine Inspiration
Looking at Yuan Buyu's determined eyes, Zhou Lingyi felt relieved.

She took something out of her sleeve, placed it gently on the table, and pushed it to Yuan Buyu.

The thing is a wake-up stick, square in shape, with a layer of glossy water paint on the surface. The wood is huanghuali, and there are wheat ear patterns on all four sides.

"I heard that this wake-up stick was passed down from generation to generation by Master Yuan's master. Lingyi spent some money to get it, and now it has returned to its original owner." Zhou Lingyi introduced.

"Master Zhou has put in a lot of effort, but my second apprentice has used this wake-up wood, so he doesn't want to use it again. If you insist on keeping it with you, it will only make you upset."

After Yuan Buyu pushed the wake-up stick back to Zhou Lingyi, he said, "We will have the ceremony tomorrow..."

"Don't you want to pick an auspicious day?" Zhou Lingyi asked.

Yuan Buyu didn't care about auspicious days. He said, "The day I accept a disciple is an auspicious day!"

……

"Are you ready?"

"Ready."

"Disciple, take over!" Yuan Buyu solemnly handed a folding fan to Zhou Xuan.

Zhou Xuan held the fan, always feeling that the atmosphere was not right.

This is the kitchen, surrounded by smoke and a few cook apprentices chopping vegetables.

"I don't feel like I'm learning from an apprentice, but rather like I'm attending the opening ceremony of a cooking school."

Zhou Xuan felt that a sense of ceremony was needed, or he could just do it the old way, setting out tea and wine for the apprenticeship banquet.
Yuan Buyu shook his head and said,
"I don't want to go through so much trouble. Isn't it just a sense of ceremony? I think about it, right, clothes make the man, and saddles make the horse. Our outfit is not right, so let's change it."

He went to the dormitory and got two sets of red storytelling gowns, one for himself and one for Zhou Xuan, and then they chose the ancestral tree as the place to become apprentices.

"Does it taste right now?" Yuan Buyu asked.

Zhou Xuan looked him up and down and asked, "Master, what do you think?"

"Don't call me Master. Everyone in the kitchen calls me Master. When you call me Master, I feel like I'm back in the kitchen. You should just call me Lao Yuan. Just keep the title of Master in mind."

After Yuan Buyu corrected the title, they went back to the apprenticeship ceremony and said, "It still doesn't feel as ceremonial as you said. The two of us standing under the tree in our gowns looked like we were giving lectures. How shabby!"

"Then I'll think of a plan. I've got one. Let's take some pictures. Let's take a few pictures..."

Zhou Xuan drove Yuan Buyu to the photo studio in Pingshui Prefecture, made an appointment with a photographer, installed the photographic equipment, and returned to Zhou's studio together.

Back in the courtyard, Zhou Xuan designed a lot of actions for Yuan Buyu, such as Yuan Buyu holding up his fan high, acting like Wu Song fighting a tiger, while he made faces at the side; the master and his apprentice pointed their fans forward together; the master opened the fan, and the apprentice slapped the table with a wake-up stick...

"You are really good at creating a scene." Yuan Buyu was having a great time.

After performing a dozen moves, the master and the apprentice took a serious photo together, and the apprenticeship ceremony ended in a rustic yet fashionable way.

Since he had already hired a photographer, Zhou Xuan simply called Zhou Lingyi and his five senior brothers to take a family photo.

It's rare for the Zhou family to be so cheerful.

……

After paying homage to the master, you have to enter the hall and light incense.

"This little bit of incense will take at least three days, so hard work is inevitable."

Yuan Buyu moved a table under the ancestral tree and then moved an incense burner.

The incense burner was placed on the table, with a folding fan and a wake-up stick next to it.

"Come, light some incense." Yuan Buyu instructed Zhou Xuan.

"Only one? Isn't that too little?"

This was Zhou Xuan’s first question after he entered the sect.

When he visited the temple before, he would always start with three incense sticks. This one was too few and he really couldn't afford it.

"It's not the case that the more incense sticks the better. There are rules for burning incense sticks. Lighting one stick of incense stick means that all things return to one. But not every temple can light one. Only the gods of the nine ancient temples can light one."

There are many things to pay attention to. Zhou Xuan took a match, lit a stick of incense, and inserted it into the incense burner.

"Old Yuan, what next?"

“Then it gets complicated.”

Yuan Buyu walked around the incense table and explained, "The incense in this burner is called external incense. We light external incense to arouse the inner incense.

Come, follow me, close your eyes,

Imagine, create in your mind an incense burner that is exactly the same as the one outside."

Zhou Xuan tried hard to condense the image of the incense burner in his mind.

The furnace body is made of copper, with scale patterns, gray incense soil, and light yellow long incense.

The pictures come to my imagination bit by bit. At the beginning, they are easily scattered, but then become more and more solid. They stay in my mind for longer and longer periods of time. Finally, the picture is like printed in my mind.

But the incense in the incense burner in the picture is extinguished and there is no flame.

"Is the image stable?" Yuan Buyu saw Zhou Xuan's frown becoming more relaxed.
"Stable!"

"Remember, the incense burner in your mind represents you. The folding fan and the wake-up stick next to the incense burner represent the gods. I will ask the gods to descend. You need to imagine them in your mind and establish a connection with the gods.

Once your heart is connected to the deity, you can use telepathic perception to slowly light the incense.

After the incense is lit, divine revelation will appear. "

"Old Yuan, what does divine revelation look like?"

“A folding fan opens by itself without anyone touching it, and a wake-up stick rings by itself without anyone hitting it.” When Yuan Buyu finished speaking, he asked, “Did you hear everything clearly?”

"I heard it clearly."

"Okay, storyteller's disciple Yuan Buyu, open the fan to make the wind move, wake up the hall with a wake-up call, and ask the ancestor gods to descend."

Yuan Buyu stared at the folding fan and the wake-up stick, and touched his forehead with the index finger of his right hand.

The skin between his eyebrows glowed with golden dots, which attached to his fingers one by one.

After a layer of golden color condensed, Yuan Buyu pointed at the folding fan and the wake-up stick respectively, and the folding fan and the wake-up stick were covered with a layer of gold.

At the same time, the dark clouds in the sky parted, and a ray of sunlight shone onto the fan and the wood, burning cloud patterns into the golden surface.

The presence of patterns means that the ancestor god has descended successfully.

"The ancestral god has arrived, Xuanzi, light the incense."

Yuan Buyu signaled Zhou Xuan that he could start eating, then he sat on the chair next to him, lit a water pipe, and smoked it.

It takes at least three days to light incense. It's a long time. If you keep standing without taking a good rest, your legs will be swollen.

Zhou Xuan had already started to imagine the folding fan and the wake-up stick in his mind. This step was not difficult. After all, he had already imagined the incense burner of that size, so the fan and the wake-up stick were only a little bigger.

Without much effort, the fan and wood were also engraved next to the incense burner in Zhou Xuan's mind.

At the moment when Shan Mu completely stabilized the picture, Zhou Xuan felt that his spirit had a sense of freedom. The spiritual perception that he had been unable to use just now surged out and wrapped around the heart fragrance in his mind.

He heard, saw, and felt it.

He heard the sound of the wind blowing, saw a wisp of almost transparent smoke, and smelled the unique herbal aroma of the incense body, mixed with a hint of burning sawdust.

The incense is actually already burning, but the degree of burning is so slight that it can be ignored.

"It would be better if the fever was more severe."

Zhou Xuan said to himself that what you think is what you get. The fire of his heart was really big. He heard the "crackling" sound of burning. The flames were already visible to the naked eye, and the smell of burning sawdust became stronger.

"More intense..." Zhou Xuan gave instructions again. This time the burning was indeed intense, but a little too intense. The flame of the incense grew rapidly, like a fire dragon several meters high.

The fire was so fierce that it seemed to have set Zhou Xuan's entire body on fire. His mind was in a mess, so he quickly made a meditation hand seal to see if he could stabilize his mind first and then slowly divert the fire to a smaller size.

However, the hand seal was of no use at all, and Zhou Xuan's mental guidance to reduce the fire did not work either.

When he was almost exhausted from being roasted, Zhou Xuan suddenly recalled that when he was entangled by the Buddha chanting in the temple, he did nothing but lay down directly, and it worked wonders. He thought he could give it a try...

Yuan Buyu, who was watching from the side, looked at Zhou Xuan, who was sweating profusely, without any expression, and smoked comfortably.

"Haha, you are too hasty. Lighting incense requires gradual progress. If you are angry, it will be even more angry. Don't fight back. This is the gods trying to suppress your temper. Can you beat the gods?"

Yuan Buyu smiled. He had just finished smoking a pipe and lowered his head, knocking the ashes against the legs of a bamboo chair, making a loud bang.

"Pah, pah!"

One sound is the sound of opening the fan, and the other sound is the sound of hitting the table with a wake-up stick.

Yuan Buyu heard the sound and looked up suddenly. After seeing the folding fan and the wake-up stick clearly, he sat in silence for a long time with an incredible expression. He tilted his head and looked at Zhou Xuan, saying, "Ah!?"

(End of this chapter)