Notes on Longevity

Chapter 183 Six parts destiny, four parts path; cause and effect are predetermined, retribution is inevitable.

"Everything is predestined, and nothing is up to us." The autumn wind was bleak, and the trees were withered and yellow. Ping An watched as the mist on Duqing Mountain dissipated and everything returned to its original state. He kept repeating the words that Dao Yisheng had said.

He lowered his head and slowly raised his hands, examining the lines on his palms with an extremely unfamiliar gaze. He remembered that during his time at Zoumaguan, he had heard his ancestor and senior brother talk about divination and fortune-telling.

The shape and direction of the lines on a person's palm can predict their life and what they will experience. He had asked the ancestor about this, but the ancestor refused to answer because Ping An was still too young.

As for his senior brother, Yu Yan, he once said: "In addition to the lines on the palm, a person's birth date and facial features can also be calculated."

However, his senior brother Yu Yan only told him, "The lines on your palm are intricate and complex, indicating that you will have many hardships in your life. However, judging from your face, you are free from disasters and misfortunes. As for your birth chart, the result is completely different from everything you have experienced. I don't understand."

Ping An looked at his senior brother, who was slumped on the cliff where they often meditated, and he was also completely puzzled.

Dao Yisheng, seeing Ping An lost in thought, casually pulled her back from her reverie with a single sentence: "Fate is determined by heaven, but fortune is in your own hands. Your birth chart indicates a career in officialdom, but you were born in a chaotic era and almost became someone else's food. Your appearance is not like that either; it's just that your fortune has changed your appearance, making you seem so sentimental and melancholic."

Ping An raised her head, tears welling in her eyes, and looked at the strange tree face, asking, "Then what you said before, that I might not be able to see the immortals on this journey, was that also something you saw in my destiny?"

"No." The mountain god Dao Yisheng twisted his tree face and shook his head in denial, saying, "In a person's life, three parts are destiny, three parts are luck, and the remaining four parts are far above destiny, which is 'the Way'."

"Dao?" Ping An lowered his hands and looked at Dao Yisheng with confusion in his heart.

In his mind, the so-called Dao is the harmony between heaven and earth, the alternation of the sun and moon, and the rotation of the four seasons, and people experience all the changes in it; and people themselves are a kind of Dao, closely related to all changes, such as the blooming and withering of flowers, the withered branches and green buds, just like the life and death of people, and the joy, anger, sorrow and happiness, longing and separation in it are the changes of the Dao of people.

Ping An's understanding is correct, but at his age, it's already the limit for him to comprehend these things.

So the mountain god Dao Yisheng explained to him, "The Dao can also be called cause and effect."

Ping An looked at Him in bewilderment, the tears in her eyes receding, replaced by endless contemplation, "Cause and effect?"

"It's like this: if your master hadn't come along, or had just helplessly watched you fall into someone else's mouth, you wouldn't be standing in front of me today, and I wouldn't be telling you about my past. Then no one would know about my past. The connection between the two is called cause and effect."

Ping An was puzzled by this and asked in return, "But this is not the Great Dao. In the mortal world, life and death are natural. Although it is one of the Daos, it is not the whole Dao."

Upon hearing this, the mountain god Dao Yisheng suddenly smiled and said, "It wasn't a waste of my breath to recount all these past events; you understand a little bit now."

His aged laughter still echoed in the mountains and forests, and it was heard that He asked Peace, "Do you remember what the first sentence of the Tao Te Ching is?"

“I remember.” Ping An had long been familiar with the Tao Te Ching and knew its general meaning, but he was still puzzled by the question from the mountain god Dao Yisheng. He didn’t know why the mountain god Dao Yisheng asked such a question.

Seeing that Ping An remembered, He stopped beating around the bush. He shook the tree trunk, causing many green leaves to fall, and then said, "Actually, I didn't understand these things at first. Later, after Taihua's cultivation was taken away by the Queen Mother of the West, and I was driven out of the mountain, I only understood these things when the Queen Mother of the West left us a sliver of opportunity to save Green Robe."

"What have you understood?"

Ping An looked melancholy, yet asked a foolish question, which made the mountain god Dao Yisheng laugh: "You look like someone who has seen through all the ways of the world, yet is helpless, but why do you still ask such silly questions?"

Ping An was so ashamed by the words of the mountain god Dao Yisheng that he lowered his head and remained silent.

Seeing this, the mountain god Dao Yisheng said helplessly, "After Taihua's cultivation was taken away, he stood on the Kunlun Mountain amidst the swirling snow and wailed. But when I woke up at the foot of the mountain, Taihua was gone."

"At the time, I didn't know that Taihua had left Kunlun. The first thing I did after I woke up was to imitate Taihua and try to pay my respects to the Queen Mother of the West. But when I saw her again, she told me that Taihua had already left."

Dao Yisheng's aged and drawn-out voice echoed in Ping An's ears as he lowered his head. The words of the mountain god Dao Yisheng kept replaying in his mind, and he was too ashamed to look up. However, he seemed to see the scene from that day in Dao Yisheng's gentle but helpless words and in his ashamed and uneasy eyes that looked around.

"Gone?" He saw Dao Yisheng's incredulous look, and he also saw the Queen Mother's majestic and disdainful eyes.

"Taihua is gone?" Upon hearing the Queen Mother's words, Dao Yisheng slumped to the ground. Looking up at the Queen Mother high above him, he panicked for a moment and hurriedly asked, "You took away his cultivation, and you let him leave alone. Something will happen to him!"

Faced with Dao Yisheng's questioning and accusations, the Queen Mother ignored them and said, "Taihua was willing to pay the price to save that woman, and his departure was his own choice. I have no right to interfere. But you, now that the woman has a glimmer of hope, why don't you go to find her, but instead come here and make up stories for me? Isn't it a waste of the opportunity that Taihua gave up everything to secure for the two of you?"

As soon as the Queen Mother finished speaking, she waved the sleeve of her dark robe, and a phantom formed from the three souls and seven spirits of the green essence appeared before Dao Yisheng. In addition, two white beads that had been transformed from the cultivation that had been taken away earlier also appeared in Dao Yisheng's hands.

He stared blankly at the illusory green-clad figure before him and the white pearl in his hand, when he heard the Queen Mother speak again: "I am the chief deity in charge of life, death, and plague, yet I must also abide by the laws of Heaven. If I were to defy the laws of Heaven today and seek this woman, and other Kunlun disciples came to me in the same manner, would I save them or not?"

"Life and death are ordained by fate and cannot be changed at will. Otherwise, not to mention me, you will not be able to bear the consequences of such karma in the future. So, if you want to save people, you must bear the price."

"Can this price save Green Robe?" Dao Yisheng put the illusory Green Robe and the two white beads into his pocket, then looked up and asked.

The Queen Mother shook her head and replied, "No."

Dao Yisheng clenched his fists in remorse, his head bowed and his breathing trembling. He then took out the two white beads and asked, "Your Majesty, could you please help me return these to Taihua? I am willing to bear the consequences myself to find Green Robe."

“The cause has been made, the effect is inevitable, and the will of Heaven cannot be changed.” After saying this, the Queen Mother waved her sleeve at Dao Yisheng again and said, “I have already sent this girl to be reincarnated in the mortal world, and this phantom is your last chance to find her.”

"The closer you get to her, the more real the illusion becomes. Once you find her, you must insert the illusion, along with your chuunibyou (adolescent delusions of grandeur) into her body, and everything will be accomplished. At that time, you will naturally know whatever you want to ask or know. As for Taihua, he has gone to Jiangnan."

As the Queen Mother spoke, she turned from the heavens and stepped into Kunlun, leaving only her last words echoing in Dao Yisheng's ears as he bowed his head.

"It was only at this moment that I realized that the Queen Mother of the West had known everything I was thinking all along." Dao Yisheng looked at Ping An, who was bowing his head, and felt as if he were seeing himself bowing his head everywhere at the foot of Kunlun Mountain. He was filled with emotion.

Ping An lowered his head and remained silent, simply listening to what the mountain god Dao Yisheng was saying.

"Later, I knelt there, feeling very tormented. I didn't know whether I should go looking for Green Robe or Taihua."

Dao Yisheng looked at the bead in his hand, then summoned the green-clad phantom again, his gaze constantly shifting back and forth between the two.

He couldn't decide whether she should go to find Green Robe or go to Jiangnan to find Taihua.

He kept asking himself: If I go to find Green Robe, what about Taihua? But if I go to find Taihua, what about the opportunity he had painstakingly earned for himself?
he does not know.

After a long silence, he looked at the beads in his hand and finally made a decision. He stood up, put both beads back into his pocket, and looked towards Jiangnan, towards the place where Taihua had gone. Since the Queen Mother had already reincarnated Green Robe, he would be able to find her one day; but Taihua was different. He had lost his cultivation, and he didn't know how long he could live, but he knew that without his cultivation, Taihua might die on his way to Jiangnan.

He thought so.

On the way to Jiangnan, Taihua dragged his frail, aged body, carrying a wooden cane that was much taller than him as he took each step with difficulty.

Although the Queen Mother of the West took back all the magical techniques Taihua had learned in Kunlun, Taihua's original cultivation level remained. However, the separation of the two caused his cultivation level to temporarily disappear, requiring slow recovery.

As Taihua walked along the road, passing through a small area comprised of several fields and dozens of households, he looked at the people who had already planted wheat and rice and were bending over to fertilize them, and smiled sadly.

"Spring planting awaits autumn harvest, summer is busy, winter is more leisurely. The four seasons pass by, year after year."

Taihua, dressed in a Taoist robe, attracted a young man carrying fertilizer water with his aged body and weathered words.

He put down the load on his shoulders. Although it was still springtime, he was already covered in sweat, his greasy skin dripping with beads of perspiration, mixed with a strong smell of fertilizer.

He clapped his hands, walked up to Taihua, and said with a cheerful smile, "Old Taoist, where are you going?"

Taihua only realized that a young man was standing next to him when he heard the voice. He looked at the young man's dark skin and the beads of sweat constantly coming out of his body, and then said with emotion, "Not going anywhere. Just wandering around and sightseeing."

The young man was even more amused upon hearing this. He looked Taihua up and down and said, "Old Taoist priest, you're not young anymore. Aren't you afraid of hurting your health by traveling around?"

"No harm, no harm." Taihua laughed as he listened to the young man's teasing words. "I was so eager to see the immortals that I traveled all over the world and saw all the people. In the end, I forgot that there are places in the world that are more beautiful than the fairyland."

Upon hearing this, the young man frowned. Looking at Taihua's aged appearance, he found his words strange and suddenly became interested, asking, "Have you been to the fairyland, sir?"

"Never been there, never been there," Taihua said with a shake of his head and a smile.

"Then how do you know the scenery of paradise is inferior to that of the mortal world?" The young man seemed a little disappointed when Taihua said he hadn't been to paradise. He pointed to a figure bent over, busy in the field and said, "That's my father. He's over sixty this year. When I was little, I wouldn't go to work in the fields, so he lied to me and said there are gods in this world. He said they're watching us from heaven, and as long as I'm willing to work in the fields, the gods will remember me and say, 'This child is good; maybe he can become a god in heaven someday.'"

“I was young then, and when I heard that working could make me a god, I went to do it. I’ve been doing it ever since, and I haven’t seen anything. Of course, I later found out that my father was lying to me.”

"If you can't see any immortals, then why are you still working?" Taihua asked.

The young man waved his hand and chuckled, "I've grown up now. I can tell the difference between what's real and what's fake. Saying there are gods is just fooling kids, but if we don't farm, we won't have food, and if we don't have food, we won't have anything to eat. What would happen if we didn't have anything to eat? We're not real gods. If we don't eat, we'll starve to death."

The young man waved his hand, and Taihua suddenly remembered what the Queen Mother of the West had said: "Immortals are also human beings."

So he asked the young man, "Then tell me, are gods also human?"

The young man was immediately furious. His eyes widened in disbelief as he stared at Taihua, exclaiming, "What are you saying? How can a god be human?"

"Have you seen it? Why do you think that?" Taihua asked, puzzled.

"Never seen him before." The young man kept his distance from Taihua, seemingly already sensing that something was wrong with him.

"How do you know immortals aren't if you've never seen them?" Taihua didn't understand. That was something the Queen Mother of the West had said to him. But why would a mortal who had never seen immortals think they weren't human? He didn't understand.

As Taihua spoke, he leaned on his wooden cane and slowly approached the young man, trying to find the answer from him.

But the young man was terrified by Taihua's dazed appearance. He picked up the bucket of fertilizer and walked around it along the ridge of the field. Because he was so focused on avoiding the suddenly changed and delirious Taihua, he couldn't hold onto the bucket of fertilizer, and some of the foul-smelling fertilizer spilled directly onto Taihua.

But Taihua didn't care. He wanted to follow them and find out why the young man thought immortals weren't human.

But the young man wouldn't stop. He carried the fertilizer along, muttering to himself, "I thought he was some enlightened master after reading that poem. Turns out he's just a madman. What bad luck!"

As he spoke, he didn't forget to look back to see if Taihua was still chasing after him, but when he turned around, he found that Taihua had disappeared on the ridge of the field and had vanished without a trace.

When he couldn't find Taihua, he panicked and slipped, falling into the field and getting covered in fertilizer. But he had no time to worry about that. He scrambled to his feet and cried out in the direction Taihua had disappeared, "Father! Father! Immortal! I saw an immortal!"

The young man's fear turned to excitement, and his shouts echoed across the fields. At that moment, the farmers who were busy fertilizing and preparing the land slowly got up, rubbing their bent backs with their hands covered in mud or smeared with fertilizer, and looked in his direction.

Among them, an old man holding a wooden ladle for scooping fertilizer shouted at the young man, "Sanwazi! What are you doing daydreaming in broad daylight! Look at you, the fertilizer didn't get on the land, it's all on you! You're competing with the crops for food, do you want to go hungry this winter?! Go and fetch some more fertilizer right now!"

Hearing his father's scolding, the young man quickly retorted, "No, Father, I really saw it! I was just talking to him. He even asked me if gods are human!"

"Sanwazi! Do you need another beating?!" Father gripped the wooden ladle, which reeked of fertilizer, and roared at the young man, "Hurry up! Otherwise, you'll be like this god tonight, not allowed to eat."

Sanwazi stood there, feeling wronged. He looked at himself, covered in bloated sweat, and then at the spot where Taihua had disappeared, utterly helpless. He thought the immortal his father had told him about was a lie, but he never expected to actually encounter one. In other words, he had mistaken the immortal for a madman.

"Hey! I say, Sanwa's dad, if you hadn't told Sanwa all those stories about gods and immortals since he was little, how could Sanwa be like this!"

Suddenly, an old woman's voice rang out from the field.

"Hmph! And now you're blaming me!" Father said angrily to the third child, "All you do is eat and do nothing, thinking about these messy things all day. Still looking? Hurry up and fetch some fertilizer!"

Sanwazi had no choice but to carry the wooden bucket back again, covered in filth, despite his father's angry scolding.

However, as he passed by the spot where Taihua stood again, he couldn't help but mutter to himself in curiosity, "Why did he ask me if immortals are human? Strange."

Sanwazi, still puzzled, carried the wooden bucket and walked away into the distance.

Dao Yisheng, on the other hand, helped the elderly Taihua walk through the mountains and forests.

(End of this chapter)