Supreme Golden Palace

Chapter 71: Enlightenment (Part )

Facing King Kaoshan's exclamation, Lü Shang bowed, gently placed the bronze mirror in his arms, and said aloud, "Your Excellency is too kind. I simply followed my heart. Only with your Excellency's constant guidance could I have made such progress."

Yang Lin nodded slightly and said softly, "It's a pity that there is no golden ointment left in this world. If I had the golden ointment, the power of this bronze mirror would be unimaginable."

"When I was young, I made friends from all over the world. I heard them talk about these precious mirrors. They all said they were magical and mysterious. However, the magic is hidden and will not be revealed under normal circumstances. You need to smear them with gold paste, wipe them with pearl powder, and hold them up to the sun, and the magic will appear."

"Coating the mirror with golden paste?" Lü Shang muttered to himself. Having long studied the Taoist canon of various schools, he naturally knew the preciousness of golden paste. Golden paste was a Taoist elixir, said to prolong life and aid in achieving immortality. In the "Chronicle of Emperor Mu," golden paste was referred to as "ointment of gold."

Yang Lin sighed, "They say you need to apply golden ointment to the mirror, but where in the world can you find such ointment? Even if it did exist, most people would seek to prolong their lives or attain immortality. Why would they abandon the fundamental principle and pursue the magical powers of a precious mirror?"

Lu Shang, holding a bronze mirror in his arms and a steel whip in one hand, said, "My lord, it is a great blessing for Lu Shang to have such a divine object as the Mirror of Reflection to protect him. The ancients said that the sky is imperfect and nothing is perfect. Don't use up all your power and enjoy all your blessings. If you continue to be greedy, you will be like the waxing moon, which will then wane."

Yang Lin was pleased and said, "It's rare that you think this way. I only hope that you can live up to the trust of the court and the respect I hold you in."

Lu Shang said in a deep voice, "Don't worry, Your Highness. With me, Lu Shang, here, Baidaochuan is a fortress of gold and hot springs. We will surely be able to hold out until Your Highness leads his army to our aid."

The Biography of Kuai Tong in the Book of Han says: "Cities in border areas must be firmly defended, like fortresses of gold and hot springs, impregnable." The phrase "as impregnable as a fortress of gold" during the Three Kingdoms period was taken from this allusion.

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After returning to the villa of the Duke's Mansion, Lu Shang dismissed the approaching servants and pushed open the door of the study.

He sat on the couch and carefully placed the mirror in front of the couch, his eyes fixed on the mirror.

"The treasure passed down by Emperor Huangdi, the Ancient Mirror!" Lu Shang murmured to himself.

If we only talk about the heart mirror, Lu Shang may not have much impression, but when talking about the fifteen bronze mirrors of Emperor Huangdi, Lu Shang thought of the "Record of the Ancient Mirror" recorded in the "Taiping Guangji" of the Song Dynasty.

Especially when King Kaoshan Yang Lin mentioned that the mirror had to be coated with gold paste in order to unleash its various magical effects, Lu Shang was finally certain that this was indeed one of the fifteen bronze mirrors mentioned in "Records of Ancient Mirrors".

However, the protagonist Wang Du in "The Ancient Mirror" obtained the eighth bronze mirror, while Lu Shang got the seventh one from Yang Lin.

"The twenty-four authentic characters symbolize the twenty-four solar terms. The mirror body is illuminated by the sun, and the characters and patterns on the back are reflected in the image without any loss of detail."

It was also because of the magic of the bronze mirror in "Ancient Mirror Records" that when Yang Lin lamented that he could not see the magical power of the magic mirror after it was coated with gold paste and wiped with pearl powder, Lu Shang said that one should not enjoy all the blessings, because too much blessing will become a disaster rather than a blessing.

This is not an exaggeration of the bronze mirror's magical power. Wang Du is just a mortal, but after holding the bronze mirror, a raccoon cat with a thousand years of practice and a dragon snake with five hundred years of practice cannot withstand the power of the magic mirror.

Later, Wang Du's younger brother Wang Ji resigned from his official position, borrowed his brother's magic mirror, and traveled all over the mountains and rivers.

Wang Ji encountered two spirits, a turtle and a monkey, at Mount Song. He used a mirror to reveal their true forms, causing them to die. In the Yujing Pond, he made a giant dragon appear. When crossing the Yangtze River in Guangling, the wind and waves subsided with the light of the mirror. Later, when climbing mountains and crossing ridges, he also used the mirror to drive away bears and scare birds. He simply killed the demons he encountered and avoided any disaster.

Such a divine object is naturally not something that mortals can enjoy for long. Later, the bronze mirror god appeared in Wang Ji's dream and told him that his fate was over. He asked him to return home quickly and see Wang Du for the last time, and then fled far away.

"Look at the heart, look at the subtlest part of the human heart. What is my heart like?"

Lu Shang looked at the bronze mirror, which reflected his face. With his temperament, he couldn't help but let out a low cry.

"This, this is, me?" He looked at the face in the bronze mirror in surprise, which was both familiar and unfamiliar.

His face naturally didn't change much, it still looked the same.

However, the areas of his head, hair, eyes, nose, and tongue reflected in the mirror seemed to be pulsating with divine light. Every time it pulsated, he could feel the spirit in the corresponding area responding to it from afar.

Seeing this strange sight, Lu Shang pointed the heart-reflecting mirror at his chest thoughtfully, and saw a little glow immediately appearing from his chest on the mirror.

"So-called illuminating the heart, does it mean illuminating the most fundamental obsession in people's hearts?"

Seeing these fluorescent lights, Lu Shang had an idea and guessed the meaning of the mirror.

"Perhaps because of this, Liu Chishui was thinking of Fengxian at the beginning, and this mirror of the heart showed Fengxian's appearance. But what I have always thought about and thought about is my path to human immortality, my path to immortality. Therefore, what this mirror reflects are my acupoints and body spirit."

"Incredible, truly incredible. If this is true, then this Heart Mirror is more precious to me than any other treasure."

Looking at the little bit of fluorescence on the mirror, Lu Shang said in a daze, "The acupoints and spirit of the human body can actually be revealed by the Heart Mirror."

"The Great Heavenly Immortal of Hunyuan Yiqi, is this the method of the Great Heavenly Immortal of Hunyuan Yiqi?"

If what Lu Shang thought was correct, these fluorescent lights were the locations of the acupoints on his body. Then the value of this Heart Mirror to Lu Shang was extremely great. It would not be an exaggeration to say that it was a treasure for achieving enlightenment.

You must know that according to Lu Shang's idea of ​​the way to becoming an immortal, one must complete 48,000 orifices, achieve 84,000 gods, and finally shatter the vacuum, so that one can achieve the Taoist fruit of the Taiyi Heavenly Immortal above the Hunyuan Yiqi.

Shattering the vacuum is a realm that only exists in theory and was deduced by Lu Shang after studying the "Secret of Jinhua".

In theory, this realm is equivalent to the Taiyi Heavenly Immortal above the Hunyuan Yiqi, but the magical powers are ten or a hundred times greater than those of the Taiyi Heavenly Immortal.

However, the prerequisite for shattering the vacuum is the perfection of 48,000 acupoints and 84,000 bodies and spirits.

How difficult it is to complete the forty-eight thousand numbers and achieve eighty-four thousand gods!

Just measuring the acupoints can consume most of the energy of an ordinary practitioner, not to mention concentrating on the body and mind in the acupoints.

Lü Shang had only contemplated the 365th Body God so far, and this was only possible due to the experience of the Shangqing Sect's predecessors, which allowed him to cultivate without hindrance. However, after achieving the 365th Body God, the rest of the journey would be his own.

"Mirror of the heart, reflect my heart, reflect my path." Lu Shang whispered to himself.

He took out a roll of plain silk from his sleeve, ground ink and wet the brush, opened the silk, looked at the blank silk, and perfected his body and spirit sutra bit by bit.

This is the foundation of his pursuit of truth, to be tempered by the mundane world and to be cleansed of all worldly desires.

Compared with the path of human immortality, the title of emperor's son-in-law, power and wealth are all passing clouds.

(End of this chapter)