Of course, Li Zhi had only been guessing, since he had never tried it.
After repeatedly confirming the ritual's methods and procedures,
Li Zhi immediately went out to buy the Five Grains and the Three Sacrificial Animals.
He was only a mortal. Using the Five Grains and the Three Sacrificial Animals for the ritual was already his limit.
Anything more, and he would not have been able to bear it.
These were the rules described in Stealing Heavenly Secrets: rituals had limits, rites had proper bounds, and violators would suffer Heaven's retribution.
While Li Zhi was preparing the offerings,
Ye Fan, now a fourth-year student, came to his Antique Style Jewelry Shop again.
After more than a year of cultivation, Ye Fan only felt that he had considerably more energy than before and ate a little more at every meal. Other than that, there had been no obvious changes.
Moreover, whenever he practiced that Breathing Method, he always felt unsatisfied.
It seemed that the Breathing Method was not actually suited to him.
That was why he had come to find Li Zhi again, hoping to obtain another Cultivation Method from him.
After interacting with Li Zhi, Ye Fan had already determined that Li Zhi definitely had black-market connections and could obtain plenty of shady treasures.
A mere jewelry shop absolutely could not support Li Zhi's daily expenses.
Ye Fan came to the shop alone.
"Boss Li?" Seeing that no one was in the shop, Ye Fan called out.
"Coming." Zhou Mei's voice came from the Storage Room, and then she walked out carrying a tray.
When she saw Ye Fan, Zhou Mei immediately greeted him warmly. "Little Brother Ye, you've come to see my Li Zhi again?"
Ye Fan was no longer surprised by Zhou Mei and Li Zhi's relationship. "Boss Li still hasn't come back?"
Zhou Mei said, "He went to Mount Tai. He probably won't be back for a while. If you have something urgent, Little Brother Ye, you can call him."
"It's nothing urgent. I'm about to graduate, so I thought I'd ask Boss Li for some business advice." Ye Fan smiled, clearly not telling the truth.
Zhou Mei did not care about that, though. If Li Zhi had not specifically told her to treat Ye Fan and the others well when they came by, she would not have bothered with these college students.
Then Zhou Mei said, "When he comes back, I'll have him call you."
This afternoon, I chopped down two trees. One was an elm tree, and the other was also an elm tree.
So, fellow readers, please cast some votes to support this book.
The Zuo Tradition says: "The great affairs of a state lie in sacrifice and war. In sacrifice, there is the distribution of sacrificial meat; in war, there is the acceptance of sacrificial flesh. These are the great observances of the spirits."
From this, it could be seen that the ancient people had already regarded sacrifices as an important means of communicating with the gods.
From ancient times to the present, sacrifices had always been solemn affairs.
From the Great Sacrifice of a state down to a Lesser Sacrifice within a household,
those performing the sacrifices would often select the time and place to demonstrate their respect for the gods or their ancestors.
Thus, a whole series of sacrificial rites had arisen.
There were rites for sacrificing to Heaven, rites for honoring ancestors, rites for worshiping gods, and many other kinds of sacrificial methods.
The sacrificial rites recorded in Stealing Heavenly Secrets, by contrast, seemed rather casual.
There were no fixed postures and no ritual requirements.
As long as one built a Five-Colored Earth Altar, presented the offerings, and recited the Sacrificial Oration, the sacrifice could be completed.
Of course, that was merely Li Zhi's literal understanding of it.
As for whether there were deeper applications, he did not know.
Still, he vaguely felt that things could not be that simple.
Unfortunately, a mortal's knowledge was limited. No matter how many ideas he had, they would remain empty speculation.
The Heaven-Sacrificing Luck-Borrowing Method recorded in Stealing Heavenly Secrets was extremely simple.
It required neither the selection of a special time nor the performance of a sacred and solemn ceremony.
Thus, Li Zhi built a Five-Colored Earth Altar in his backyard, one meter in diameter and one chi high.
He then placed the purchased ox head, pig head, and sheep head in the center of the Sacrificial Platform.
Next, he placed the Five Grains in the corresponding colored areas of soil on the Sacrificial Platform according to the attributes of metal, wood, water, fire, and earth.
The Five Grains here were not the Lesser Five Grains known to ordinary people: rice, millet, broomcorn millet, wheat, and beans.
Rather, they were the Great Five Grains spoken of by Daoism: Water Grain, Fire Grain, Jin Gu, Earth Grain, and Wood Grain.
Wood Grain broadly referred to edible things that grew on trees. Apples, walnuts, and other fruits and nuts that grew on trees all belonged to Wood Grain.
Fire Grain broadly referred to edible things whose seeds grew at the top. Fire Grain rose upward, and people mainly relied on Fire Grain to live. Rice, wheat, millet, and other foods commonly eaten all belonged to Fire Grain.
Earth Grain broadly referred to food dug out of the soil, such as potatoes, sweet potatoes, and peanuts.
Jin Gu broadly referred to fruits produced by vines. Grapes, pumpkins, watermelons, and other such fruits all belonged to Jin Gu.
Water Grain broadly referred to fruits produced by plants growing in water, such as lotus roots and fox nuts.
Thus, 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.
According to Li Zhi's understanding, the reason the sacrificial method in Stealing Heavenly Secrets did not require choosing a special time or place was precisely because its object of worship was the Great Universe.
"Above and below and in the four directions" was called space, while "from ancient times to the present" was called time.
Therefore, any time and any place within the Great Universe was actually the correct time and the correct place. There was no such thing as an unsuitable hour or an unfavorable direction.
Of course, Li Zhi's understanding might have been wrong, but based on the literal meaning, this was as far as he could understand it.
In other words, as long as the offerings were sufficient, the sacrifice could be performed anywhere and at any time, allowing him to borrow Cosmic Luck for his own use.
Of course, Li Zhi would not naively believe that his current understanding of the sacrifice was eternally correct and unchanging.
There had to be even more profound principles hidden behind it. Otherwise, professions such as feng shui masters, Source Heavenly Masters, and Dragon Seekers should not exist in the world.
Unfortunately, those things were beyond the understanding of the mortal Li Zhi at present.
Li Zhi, who believed he had thoroughly understood the book Stealing Heavenly Secrets, began preparing for the first great gamble of his life.
The finest offerings could be bought as long as one was willing to spend money.
The ox head had been taken from an old yellow ox with humanlike intelligence, the pig head came from a black boar over five years old that had been used for breeding, and the sheep head was from a wild yellow goat.
The Three Sacrificial Animals alone cost Li Zhi fifty thousand yuan.
Spending money was still a minor matter.
Building the Five-Colored Altar was what truly consumed his effort.
The Sacrificial Platform did not look large. It was only one meter in diameter and one chi high, but building it took Li Zhi a full ten days.
Selecting the soil and ramming it into place were fairly simple steps.
The truly complicated part was carving runes on the Sacrificial Platform with the blood of the Three Sacrificial Animals mixed with cinnabar while the earth was being tamped down.
As for the origin of those runes, Stealing Heavenly Secrets contained a Sacrificial Oration of three hundred characters.
Li Zhi had to use cinnabar mixed with blood to imprint those Oracle Bone Script characters, one by one, neatly into the interior of the altar.
As he imprinted the Oracle Bone Script, Li Zhi could not help recalling the original novel he had once read. During the era of Perfect World, the Other Domain's Ancient Ancestor had once used a Divine Decree outside the Primordial Imperial City, at the Heavenly Abyss, to condemn Heaven.
The golden runes flying out from the Divine Decree seemed to threaten the heavens themselves.
As Li Zhi imprinted the Oracle Bone Script, he imagined in his heart that one day he, too, might achieve such a glorious spectacle.
Perhaps the true meaning of this Sacrificial Oration written in Oracle Bone Script was just as its literal meaning suggested: it was a Divine Decree capable of communicating with Heaven and Earth.
Li Zhi spent a full seven days carefully imprinting all three hundred Oracle Bone Script characters from the Sacrificial Oration, leaving every one of them intact inside the Five-Colored Earth Altar.
After more than ten days of meticulous preparation, the moment for the formal sacrifice to Heaven had finally arrived.
Whether Stealing Heavenly Secrets could truly steal the secrets of Heaven would be decided by this final effort.
After bathing and changing clothes, Li Zhi stood before the Sacrificial Platform and lit three sticks of incense. Then he began reciting the Sacrificial Oration.
Only after reciting the Sacrificial Oration nine full times did he begin the next step.
Using yellow paper, he set fire to all the Five Grains and Three Sacrificial Animals on the altar.
Li Zhi felt that this step was supposed to use magical power to offer the sacrifices to Heaven and Earth.
However, he had no magical power, so he could only use the traditional method of burning the offerings.
As fierce flames rose from the Sacrificial Platform, Li Zhi inexplicably began to grow nervous.
Suddenly, he seemed to feel someone watching him. He hurriedly turned his head and searched the four corners of the courtyard, but found no trace of any living creature.
That feeling of being watched came and went quickly, utterly inexplicably.
After everything on the Sacrificial Platform had burned to ashes, the heavenly omen Li Zhi had been anticipating did not appear.
It seemed that all his hard work over the past ten-odd days had merely been self-amusement.
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