Stealing Heavenly Secrets from Shading the Heavens Section 12

Of course, Li Zhi was only guessing since he hadn't tested it.

After repeatedly confirming the methods and procedures of the ritual, Li Zhi immediately went out to buy the Five Grains and the Three Sacrificial Animals.

He was just a mortal; offering the Five Grains and Three Sacrificial Animals was already his limit.

Anything more, and he wouldn't be able to bear it.

This was the rule described in "Stealing Heavenly Secrets": rituals have their limits, offerings have their measure; transgressors face heavenly punishment.

While Li Zhi was preparing the offerings, Ye Fan, now a senior in college, came to his Antique Style Jewelry Shop again.

After over a year of cultivation, Ye Fan only felt that his energy was much stronger than before, he ate a bit more at each meal, and there were no other obvious changes.

Moreover, the breathing technique he practiced never felt quite satisfying.

It seemed as if the breathing method wasn't a suitable cultivation technique for him.

So, he came to find Li Zhi again, hoping to get some other cultivable methods from him.

Through their interactions, Ye Fan had confirmed that Li Zhi must have access to the black market, where he could get plenty of shady, good stuff.

A simple jewelry shop definitely couldn't cover Li Zhi's daily expenses.

Ye Fan came to the shop alone.

"Boss Li?" Seeing no one in the store, Ye Fan called out.

"Coming." Zhou Mei's voice came from the Storage Room, and then she walked out holding a tray.

Upon seeing Ye Fan, Zhou Mei immediately greeted him warmly, "Little Brother Ye, here to see my Li Zhi again?"

Ye Fan was no longer surprised by Zhou Mei and Li Zhi's relationship. "Boss Li hasn't come back yet?"

Zhou Mei said, "He went to Mount Tai; it'll probably be a while before he returns. If Little Brother Ye has something urgent, you can give him a call."

"Nothing urgent. I'm about to graduate, so I wanted to ask Boss Li for some business tips." Ye Fan smiled, clearly not telling the truth.

Zhou Mei didn't care about that. If Li Zhi hadn't mentioned that Ye Fan and the others should be well taken care of when they came, she wouldn't bother with these college students at all.

Then, she said, "When he gets back, I'll have him call you."

This afternoon, I cut down two trees—one was an elm, and the other was also an elm.

So, dear readers, please cast some votes to support this book.

As the "Zuo Zhuan" says: "The great affairs of a state are sacrifice and war. In sacrifice, there is the distribution of sacrificial meat; in war, there is the reception of blessed meat—these are the great rites of the spirits."

From this, it can be seen that ancient peoples already regarded sacrifice as an important means of communicating with the spirits.

Sacrifice has always been a very solemn matter, from ancient times to the present.

From grand state rituals to small family offerings, Those performing sacrifices often choose specific times and locations to show respect to the spirits or ancestors.

Thus, a series of sacrificial rites have emerged.

There are rites for sacrificing to heaven, rites for ancestor worship, rites for offering to gods, and many other diverse methods of sacrifice.

The sacrificial rites recorded in "Stealing Heavenly Secrets," however, seem somewhat casual.

There are no fixed postures or ritual requirements.

As long as one builds a Five-Colored Earth Altar, presents offerings, and recites the Sacrificial Oration, the ritual can be completed.

Of course, this is just Li Zhi's literal understanding.

As for whether there are deeper applications, he doesn't know.

But he vaguely feels it can't be that simple.

However, a mortal's insight is limited; no matter how many thoughts he has in his mind, they remain mere fantasies.

The Heaven-Sacrificing Luck-Borrowing Method recorded in "Stealing Heavenly Secrets" is very simple.

It requires neither choosing a special moment nor holding a sacred, solemn ceremony.

So, Li Zhi built a Five-Colored Earth Altar in his backyard, one meter in diameter and one foot high.

Then, he placed the purchased ox head, pig head, and sheep head in the center of the altar.

Next, he arranged the Five Grains according to their attributes of metal, wood, water, fire, and earth on the corresponding colored soil areas of the altar.

The Five Grains here are not the "Small Five Grains" commonly known to people—rice, millet, broomcorn millet, wheat, and beans.

Rather, they are the "Great Five Grains" as described by Daoism: Water Grain, Fire Grain, Metal Grain, Earth Grain, and Wood Grain.

Wood Grain generally refers to edible things that grow on trees. For example, apples, walnuts, and other fruits and nuts that grow on trees all belong to Wood Grain.

Fire Grain generally refers to edible things whose seeds grow at the top. Fire Grain rises with heat, and humans mainly rely on Fire Grain for sustenance. For instance, the rice, wheat, and millet we commonly eat all belong to Fire Grain.

Earth Grain generally refers to food dug from the ground, such as potatoes, sweet potatoes, and peanuts.

Metal Grain generally refers to fruits borne by vine plants, such as grapes, pumpkins, and watermelons, all of which belong to Metal Grain.

Water Grain generally refers to fruits that grow from plants in water, such as lotus roots and gorgon fruit.

So the five grains Li Zhi prepared were actually three jin of wheat, three jin of walnuts, three jin of peanuts, three jin of pumpkin, and three jin of lotus root—these five items.

According to Li Zhi's understanding, the reason the sacrificial method recorded in "Stealing Heavenly Secrets" didn't require choosing a special time or place was precisely because the object of the sacrifice was the Great Universe.

The four cardinal directions above and below are called space; past and present are called time.

Thus, at any moment and any location within the Great Universe, it is actually the correct moment and correct place—there's no such thing as an improper hour or unfavorable orientation.

Of course, Li Zhi's understanding might be wrong, but from the literal text, this was the extent he could grasp.

In other words, as long as the offerings were sufficient, he could perform the sacrifice anytime, anywhere, thereby borrowing Cosmic Luck for his own use.

Naturally, Li Zhi wasn't shallow enough to think that his current understanding of the sacrifice would remain forever correct and unchanging.

There had to be deeper principles behind it, otherwise professions like Feng Shui masters, Source Heavenly Masters, and Dragon Seekers wouldn't exist in the world.

But those were things that the current mortal Li Zhi couldn't comprehend.

Having convinced himself that he had thoroughly understood the book "Stealing Heavenly Secrets," Li Zhi began preparing for the first major gamble of his life.

Top-quality offerings could be bought as long as he was willing to spend money.

The ox head came from an old yellow ox that had human-like intelligence, the pig head from a black boar used for breeding that had lived over five years, and the sheep head from a wild yellow mountain goat.

Just the Three Sacrificial Animals alone cost Li Zhi fifty thousand yuan.

Spending money was the least of his worries.

The construction of the Five-Colored Altar was what truly drained his energy.

Though the altar wasn't large—only a meter in diameter and a foot high—it took Li Zhi a full ten days to build it.

Steps like selecting soil and ramming it into shape were relatively simple.

What was truly complex was that during the ramming process, he had to inscribe runes on the altar using a mixture of the Three Sacrificial Animals' blood and cinnabar.

As for the origin of those runes, they came from a three-hundred-character Sacrificial Oration recorded in "Stealing Heavenly Secrets."

Li Zhi had to imprint those Oracle Bone Script characters one by one neatly inside the altar using the cinnabar blood mixture.

While imprinting those Oracle Bone Script characters, Li Zhi couldn't help recalling the original novel he had read—during the Perfect World era, an ancient ancestor from a foreign land once used a Divine Decree to rebuke the heavens at the Heavenly Abyss outside the Primordial Imperial City.

The golden runes that flew out from the Divine Decree seemed to threaten the very sky.

As Li Zhi imprinted the characters, he fantasized in his heart about the day he might enjoy such glory.

Perhaps this Sacrificial Oration written in Oracle Bone Script was, as its literal meaning suggested, a Divine Decree capable of communicating with heaven and earth.

It took Li Zhi a full seven days to flawlessly imprint all three hundred Oracle Bone Script characters from the Sacrificial Oration inside the Five-Colored Earth Altar.

After over ten days of meticulous preparation, the moment for the formal heaven-sacrifice finally arrived.

Whether Stealing Heavenly Secrets could truly steal the secrets of heaven depended on this one push.

After bathing and changing clothes, Li Zhi stood before the altar, lit three sticks of incense, and began reciting the Sacrificial Oration.

He recited it nine full times before proceeding to the next step.

He used yellow paper to ignite all the Five Grains and Three Sacrificial Animals on the altar.

Li Zhi figured this step was meant to offer those sacrifices to heaven and earth using magical power.

But since he had no magical power now, he could only resort to the traditional method of burning the offerings with fire.

As the altar burst into blazing flames, Li Zhi inexplicably began to feel nervous.

Suddenly, he felt as if someone was secretly watching him. He quickly turned his head to search the courtyard in all directions but found no trace of any living creature.

That feeling of being watched came and went quickly, utterly inexplicable.

After everything on the altar had burned to ashes, the heavenly phenomenon Li Zhi had been expecting never occurred.

It seemed as if his ten-plus days of hard work had just been self-amusement.