Character side story: Li Jingming, Master of Yunye Temple

Li Jingming's Master passed away early, and Li Jingming, in his early twenties, took over the responsibility of Yunye Temple from his Master.

On the day before his departure, the Master held onto Li Jingming's hand tightly, preventing him from going to the Doctor, and said with a smile while coughing:

"Birth is natural, death is natural; do not do useless things, do not take pointless actions."

Physical decay is not death; forgetting is the true departure.

Your Grandmaster protected me my whole life. Now, I have to go find him. I'm afraid he'll be lonely.

But you are different; you still have Yunye Temple.

Remember, pass on the Yunye Temple...

His Master passed away peacefully, Li Jingming, without crying or making a fuss, carried him up the mountain and buried him in the spot where his Master to watch the sunset. When the villagers at the foot of the mountain learned of this, they often came to pay their respects, but over time they lost interest.

For them, the passing of the old abbot was heartbreaking but not a pity; the real pity was that the young and handsome new abbot was single.

So, Yunye Temple suddenly became Marriage Temple, and families in the surrounding villages and towns with daughters of marriageable age would bring their daughters to the temple to pray.

Most girls don't care much for these superstitious things, but when they see the image of the abbot, their hearts become much more sincere when they offer incense and worship.

Some girls even willingly tied their hair up and became nuns, remaining by the desk forever, all for the sake of a place in society.

However, Li Jingming declined to comment on this.

He focused solely on managing the temple's miscellaneous affairs, while also continuing to copy the Patriarch's Scripture Fold.

Yunye Temple has a rule that if the abbot is alive, his biography will not be shown to his disciples. In other words, Li Jingming did not know what his Master had recorded in the scriptures until after his Master passed away.

Interestingly, before adopting Li Jingming, the Master was also a mischievous troublemaker. Scripture Fold records were full of complaints about practicing in the mountains and about the disrespect of the Founding Master. He once imitated the Founding Master to deceive the villagers, but was beaten up by them. He also imitated the Founding Master to steal chickens and dogs, but was arrested by the police.

As a result, the Grandmaster was lonely in the temple for a while.

After being released, the Master complained to his Grandmaster that he would never have the chance to become an official again. The Grandmaster laughed and said, "You will be the abbot in the future, so you will be considered an 'official' in some way."

The Master chuckled, then shook his head. "I'd rather be a disciple than an official; at least then you could protect me."

The Grandmaster laughed and scolded, "Everyone has a life and death; how can I protect you for a lifetime?"

"Then you should die slowly, protect me until I die, and then you can die too, isn't that fine?"

"You wicked disciple!"

Even this unruly Master seemed to become a different person after his Grandmaster's death.

The Scripture Fold from that period are not blank; rather, they contain long passages reminiscing about the Grandmaster. Although they are called the Master's Scripture Fold, they are actually more like excerpts from the Grandmaster's past memories.

Unable to accept the loss of his Grandmaster, the Master was overcome with grief and fell seriously ill, nearly dying in the temple and causing the Yunye to end. Fortunately, a worshipper discovered Master and rescued him. The Master was filled with lingering fear, terrified that the Yunye lineage would be cut off in his hands.

But at that time, Yunye Temple was small, and which family would have a child willing to enter the temple for "cultivation"?

Forget about spiritual practice, they even struggle to make ends meet.

These hopeless days lasted for a while, until that day, when the Master in my Scripture Fold Memory seemed to have become a different person.

Years had passed since his Grandmaster left, Master was "lonely and helpless," unable to sleep for long nights. One day, as he watched the sun set, he recalled the days when he and his Grandmaster would watch the sunset together. So he walked along the mountain path, chasing the sun, unwilling to watch it descend.

The journey continued further and further, and by the time the sun set, we were already quite far from the viewpoint.

The Master was filled with sorrow and unwilling to turn back, so he kept going forward. He crossed mountains and rivers, and when he reached a place with lights on, he left the lights behind and got on the highway. He wanted to see if this straight road could lead him to the place where his Grandmaster had gone, but unexpectedly, in the middle of the night, he heard the sound of a baby crying on the deserted highway.

The Daoist priest, being a righteous cultivator, was naturally unafraid of ghosts and demons. He walked towards the sound of crying and saw a baby in swaddling clothes, covered in blood, abandoned in the roadside bushes. It was clear that the baby had been abandoned.

He should have felt sympathy upon witnessing this, but at that moment, he felt immense joy, as if his Master had led him here to accept a new life and to continue the lineage of Yunye Temple.

He shakily picked up the baby, waited all night, and when no one returned to look for it, he took it back to the temple.

As I pushed open the door to enter the temple, it was just dawn. A ray of sunlight illuminated the mountaintop, leaping over the temple's summit, and the main hall shone brightly, as if lighting the way forward for the Yunye.

He had a sudden inspiration and named the baby in his arms Jingming.

As for his surname, he took the character "Li" from his Master.

From this point on, the records Scripture Fold the Master's account book began to detail everything related to Li Jingming.

When his Master left, Li Jingming didn't shed a single tear. But as he perused the Scripture Fold, he unknowingly lost countless stacks of copies in tears.

The Master said that he also had the same lofty ambitions Founding Master, but with the country at peace, he had nowhere to put them into practice, so he could only take care of Yunye, which could be considered as not abandoning Yunye's ambitions.

From then on, Yunye's ambition became Jingming's ambition.

Then, many years later, the Divine Descent, bringing a [Faith Game] to the world.

That day, Li Jingming, who was sitting in front of the hall burning incense and copying scriptures, was suddenly pulled into a Pure White room by a force. Faced with such a strange scene, Li Jingming panicked. But when he saw the two Tokens of the gods in front of him, he did not hesitate to give up the other one and choose the old photo with his Master's figure engraved on it.

Filled with the power of Memory, he became a Memory Traveler at the Starting Point of Life Path.

The moment he became Memory Traveler, he used the gift bestowed upon him by the gods to Memory Journey.

That was the first time he had returned to the past, to the moment when his master carried him into the Yunye Temple.

He stood before the hall like an invisible man, watching his Master, who hadn't slept all night yet Old Gods, push open the door carrying a baby, and smiled as he spoke with his Master:

"The Dawn Shines on Yunye, and the scenery is bright!"

At that moment, he suddenly fell in love with the game.

He finally realized that Memory are indeed eternal; at least under the gaze of [Memory], Memory can be materialized, and he was able to search for those Memory that belonged to Yunye Temple but had been lost elsewhere.