Notes on Longevity

Chapter 51 Ping An Recounts the Past, Agricultural Products and Health Preservation

"I think he must be very important to you," Zhang Wanyi said, tears streaming down her face, her words incoherent and rambling. But Ping An answered her very seriously.

"My master is a very important person to me. If it weren't for him ten years ago, I might have been eaten by someone."

Ping An's youthful, delicate face suddenly hardened, his eyes fixed on the tree before them, as if he were seeing the horrific end of midsummer ten years ago—a time of extreme heat, widespread drought, barren land, famine, and cannibalism among the people.
"My child. My child." The blazing sun hung in the sky, its crimson color appearing extremely eerie. It emitted bright red flames all around it, which transformed into wisps of red light that rushed towards the human world, scorching everything on earth and relentlessly eroding all life.

A woman dressed in tattered hemp clothing knelt in a parched field, crying her heart out as others took her child away.

The field was teeming with people; some stood there listlessly, their eyes vacant; others sat or leaned against withered, broken trees. Almost everyone was emaciated, their eyes dark and frightening. And among them, the majority lay on the ground.

Crows or insects often come to the people lying on the ground, pecking at them or burrowing into their flesh, making noises from time to time as if announcing their death.

"Who among you is coming?" A middle-aged man, pale and thin, wearing only a tattered garment, looked solemnly at the several similarly dressed people in front of him. Among them were men and women, all with faces resembling those of a middle-aged man.

As the middle-aged man's trembling voice faded, they all turned to look at the face of the sleeping infant, a few months old, wrapped in hemp clothing, whom he had just exchanged from the woman.

They gazed at the baby's tender, adorable, chubby face, taking deep breaths, their brows almost furrowing together. They turned their heads away, unable to bear looking at the infant. The middle-aged man, seeing this, also frowned deeply. He sighed and said, "Then I'll do it."

As he spoke, he held the baby in one arm, and with a trembling hand, he pulled the other hand out from under the baby's neck. He was breathing heavily, and after placing his hand on the baby's neck, he couldn't bring himself to do it.

Perhaps the baby felt the middle-aged man's hand and his rapid breathing, and slowly opened his eyes. But when he saw that the person in front of him was not his mother, he began to cry loudly.

A clear, melodious cry, like that of a lark, rang out in the silent fields, a cry that was deafening.

The middle-aged man couldn't bring himself to do it. Although cannibalism was a daily occurrence in this field, he just couldn't bring himself to do it when it came to him.

"My child, give me back my child!" The baby's cries brought her back to the middle-aged man's side. She sobbed and pounded on him. But the man didn't turn around. Instead, he made up his mind and forcefully pinched the baby's neck.
In the field, an old Taoist priest, about fifty years old, wearing a tattered robe, carrying a burlap bag on his back, with a palm-sized gourd hanging from his waist and leaning on a cane, looked sadly and helplessly at the scene not far away.

He shook his head, sighed, straightened up, and continued walking forward, inwardly complaining about the current emperor's indulgence in sensual pleasures, which had brought about a great disaster. The Yan Dynasty was now suffering terribly, and the neighboring Tianwu Dynasty had launched an attack. Beset by internal and external troubles, their misery was compounded.

Under the blazing red sun overhead, he continued walking into the distance. He was originally a Taoist priest heading west to Kunlun to seek immortality and enlightenment, but now that the two countries were at war, the road west had become a battlefield, making it impossible to go. Now, he was just wandering aimlessly, not knowing where to go.

The field wasn't very big, and we could actually walk out of it quickly, but the blazing sun overhead kept us stopping and starting.

After stopping, he sat down wherever he could, took the gourd from his waist—it was very light. He shook it, but heard no sound from inside. He sighed again and hung the gourd back on his waist. He intended to sit and rest, but not far in front of him, he noticed a couple staring at him with somewhat vacant eyes; the woman was holding a child in her arms.

He was about to get up and leave; killing and stealing food was commonplace these days, and he didn't want to cause trouble. But just as he stood up to leave, the child in the woman's arms suddenly cried. The couple withdrew their gaze from the old Taoist priest and quickly comforted the child.

As the child cried, several people in tattered clothes walked up to the couple and said something to them. The woman then started crying, just like the previous person.

The old Taoist felt a pang of heartache at the sound of the woman and the child crying. He hesitated for a moment, then finally frowned and walked up to them. He took off the burlap bag from his back and said in a somewhat hoarse voice, "I am Qing Xuanzi. Along the way, I have seen too many children become food. I still have some sweet grains here. Would you be willing to use them to save this child's life?"

These people looked at Qing Xuanzi with astonishment in their eyes; they couldn't understand why he would do such a thing.

"Is it alright?" Qing Xuanzi asked again when he saw that the others did not react.

The group looked at the woman, who was weeping and comforting her child, then exchanged glances. Finally, the woman's husband looked at her sadly and said, "Let's exchange them. This is our child, not someone else's."

The man couldn't utter those two words, but the woman understood him. After glancing at Qing Xuanzi, she brought the child she was holding to him and cried, "Daoist Master, my child."

Qing Xuanzi was equally saddened, and he asked with a choked voice, "Does it have a name?"

"It was a boy, but he didn't survive, so we never named him," the woman said softly, wiping away her tears.

"In this chaos, just being alive is a great blessing; to live peacefully and safely is even more so."

“Then let’s call him Ping An,” the woman said before Qing Xuanzi could finish speaking.

"Peace. If he can live peacefully and safely, then we will have nothing left to worry about," the woman's husband said.

“That’s good, it’s a good omen,” the others chimed in.

Seeing this, Qing Xuanzi nodded and handed his burlap bag to the group. However, after exchanging glances, none of them took it. The woman then handed Ping An out of her bosom and presented it to Qing Xuanzi.

Qing Xuanzi was suddenly puzzled, but the woman said, "Please keep these grains, Daoist Ganliang. We are already dying, so eating them won't do us any good. We only hope that you can help us take good care of our child. We don't care about anything else."

"I understand, I understand." Qing Xuanzi slung the burlap sack back over his shoulder and took Ping An from him again. He looked down at Ping An, who had stopped crying and was now asleep, sighed, and shook his head: "You..."

When he looked up, the men had already left the fields to plant crops; the sickles used for harvesting were everywhere.
"So that's how it is. What happened after you were saved by your master?" Under the tree in the courtyard, Zhang Wanyi stopped crying as she listened to Ping An's story. She was no longer saddened by her own worries. Instead, she felt very sorry for Ping An. She hadn't expected that Ping An had such a life-or-death experience.

(End of this chapter)