The next morning, the sun shone brightly.
After rising early, Zhang Qingyuan and Zhang Junbao first went to the main hall to pay their respects to Patriarch Pure Yang, then went to the rear hall to offer a stick of incense to the Three Pure Ones, the Daoist patriarchs.
They went to the dining hall for breakfast. The front hall had already thrown open its gates, and worshippers from every direction streamed inside.
After breakfast, the brothers strolled around Pure Yang Palace.
Pure Yang Palace was even larger than Taiqing Palace. It was wealthy, after all, and its influence ranked among the highest both among the common people and in the martial world.
Zhang Qingyuan counted over seventy deity halls in Pure Yang Palace alone, from Patriarch Pure Yang to the Three Pure Ones, from the Three Pure Ones to the various emperor-lords, then from those emperor-lords to several holy mothers, as well as divine guardian soldiers and the Dragon Kings of the Four Seas.
After making a circuit, the brothers finally stopped by the main gates.
Incense offerings flourished, and the threshold was almost worn to pieces underfoot.
Zhang Qingyuan leaned against an apricot tree and yawned lazily.
"Brother Bao."
"Huh?" There was no telling what Zhang Junbao was thinking about.
Watching the worshippers, Zhang Qingyuan asked him, "After that walk around, what insights have you gained?"
Zhang Junbao thought for a moment before answering, "The common people are devout. They believe in the Dao and pray for blessings, so as Daoists, we should do even more good deeds for them, uphold their faith in Daoism, and do a better job of spreading our Daoist image among the people."
Zhang Junbao rattled off a whole speech, as though reporting to a superior.
Zhang Qingyuan rolled his eyes at him. "Bullshit!"
"Was I wrong?"
Zhang Junbao was puzzled. He thought there was nothing wrong with what he had said.
Instead, Zhang Qingyuan looked toward the Wealth God Hall and said, "Your insight should have been this: when you establish your own place of practice someday, never forget to build a Wealth God Hall. Ideally, build a separate one for each of the Wealth Gods!"
"Huh?"
Zhang Qingyuan pointed toward the Wealth God Hall and said indignantly, "See that? This Wealth God Hall alone accounts for a fifth of their total income, possibly even more!"
Zhang Junbao shook his head and said with a helpless smile, "I'll remember that."
Only after seeing his sudden repentance did Zhang Qingyuan nod in satisfaction. The lad could be taught.
He sighed again. "The Wealth Gods really do live up to their name. They're welcome wherever they go."
Zhang Junbao pursed his lips and agreed, "That really is true. No matter which Daoist temple, which Daoist sect, or whose place of practice it is, as long as there's a Wealth God Hall, it's guaranteed to receive the most incense offerings!
"It's different from Buddhism. In their temples, the incense offerings for each Buddha are all fairly even."
"Can't be helped. The Wealth Gods are in charge of getting rich, after all." Zhang Qingyuan smiled. "At Taiqing Palace, the Wealth God Hall gets the most offerings. At Pure Yang Palace, the Wealth God Hall gets the most offerings. At Jade Emperor Palace, the Wealth God Hall gets the most offerings. At Empress Wa Palace, the Wealth God Hall gets the most offerings.
"At Three Pure Ones Temple, the Temple of the Queen Mother of the West, the Temple of the Three Great Emperor-Officials, and even the Lord of the Eastern Peak's place of practice, the Wealth God Hall still gets the most offerings.
"Only those little temples that don't enshrine a Wealth God can avoid having their offerings siphoned away by one."
"Can't be helped. With money, you have everything. I'm even starting to wonder whether, someday, the offerings at the Marriage Hall will fall under the Wealth Gods' jurisdiction too." Zhang Junbao cracked a joke.
But Zhang Qingyuan knew this was no joke. A song suddenly came to mind. "They all say the Old Man of the Moon's gone offline, and the Wealth God's taken charge of love..."
The two were not disparaging anything by discussing this. They were accepting reality.
Daoists would not preach to their followers that they should care less about money and be a little more refined, and so on.
If the faithful stopped caring about money, where would the incense money come from?
So what really mattered was for all the faithful to enjoy wealth and status, with riches pouring in.
Daoists placed the greatest emphasis on letting nature take its course. Otherwise, those internet jokes from Zhang Qingyuan's previous life would never have existed.
If someone drew the worst fortune stick, a Daoist would casually help draw out the best one instead, calling it defying heaven and changing fate.
If someone insulted a Daoist, the priest would chase them down in anger and beat them up, calling it an unstable Dao heart if he failed to strike back.
Daoists came in all varieties too. Aside from each sect's rules and precepts, nothing else was restricted.
Someone might ask, if nothing they did was restricted, what if a Daoist wanted to do something bad? Would that count as following his nature too?
It already said there were rules and precepts. Can't you see? Answer me! Look at my eyes!
The rules and precepts already listed every illegal and criminal act. Anything else they did as they pleased was naturally harmless!
At this thought, Zhang Qingyuan could not help smiling.
Still, the Wealth Gods were not currently moonlighting as the Old Man of the Moon. Although the Wealth God Hall topped Pure Yang Palace's GDP rankings, the other deity halls received plentiful offerings too.
In the second tier of GDP stood Patriarch Lü's Hall. This was Patriarch Lü's place of practice, after all, and nominally everyone had come to worship him.
Next came halls closely tied to the common people's lives, such as the Kuixing Hall, the Civil and Martial Star Lords, the Marriage Hall, Fortune, Prosperity, and Longevity, and the Dragon King Hall.
These were what ordinary people believed in most. Tell them to accumulate virtue and do good in this life so their next life would be filled with good fortune, and they would not care.
They just wanted food and drink without worry in this life, and a smooth rise to the clouds.
This was also why foreign faiths other than Buddhism failed to gain traction among Chinese people.
Buddhism could at least avert calamities and resolve troubles, while Bodhisattva Guanyin could protect their families' safety and health.
Other faiths offered nothing but bullshit.
Believe in this and gain eternal life; believe in that and go to heaven.
Yet no one had ever seen anyone live forever, much less seen what heaven looked like...
As the two chatted away, Fang Ming arrived.
"This disciple greets his two martial uncles."
Although Fang Ming was older than Zhang Qingyuan and Zhang Junbao, those two fellows ranked higher in the lineage.
Fortunately, neither Zhang Qingyuan nor Zhang Junbao was the type to put on the airs of an elder. They could get along and have fun with anyone.
Seeing that he was alone, Zhang Qingyuan asked, "Where's your second senior brother?"
"You two don't know, martial uncles?"
"What should we know?"
Fang Ming explained, "Second Senior Brother went down the mountain!"
"When did he leave? I was hoping he could show us around," Zhang Junbao said in puzzlement.
Dahua was the first martial nephew they had spoken with after coming to Pure Yang Daoist Palace, so they instinctively felt closer to him. They had not expected him to leave without even saying goodbye.
"Do you two really not know the inside story?" Fang Ming studied them.
"What would we know? What's with all the hemming and hawing? Spit it out!" Zhang Qingyuan frowned.
"Ah." Fang Ming sighed and told them both what had happened yesterday.
Zhang Qingyuan and Zhang Junbao sucked in a breath of cold air. Their senior brother really was petty!
"Is your master really that... strict?" Zhang Qingyuan had wanted to say "inhuman," but dared not say it for fear his senior brother might hear.
Fang Ming blinked, leaned close to them, and muttered quietly, "You don't know this, martial uncles, but there's a saying that's always circulated around here: 'Offend the Daoist leader, and you still expect to get off easy?'"
"He's that ruthless?"
"How else do you think my fourth junior brother became a Daoist?"
"There's a story behind that?" Zhang Junbao asked.
"A huge one!" Fang Ming was a talkative fellow too. Once a topic came up, he could not stop. "My fourth junior brother is named Zhao Nianzhi. He's the youngest son of the Phoenix Sect's sect master. In his earlier years, he ran wild in the martial world, causing no end of trouble, and no one dared cross him.
"Just because he offended my master, my master forcibly brought him back from the Phoenix Sect and made him a Daoist."
"The Phoenix Sect of Laizhou Prefecture, one of the Four Sects?" Zhang Junbao asked.
"That's the one!"
Zhang Qingyuan and Zhang Junbao's impression of their senior brother deepened once again.
Zhang Qingyuan glanced around and, seeing that his senior brother was absent, hurriedly asked, "Then do you know about your master's wife..."
"Stop!" Before Zhang Qingyuan could finish, Fang Ming cut him off in time. "That's exactly why my second senior brother left. I'm not falling for that."
"Your master isn't even here."
"No." Fang Ming shook his head in refusal. "As the Buddha said, it must not be spoken!"
Damn, you're a Daoist, and you're saying that to me inside a Daoist temple?
It seemed Chen Xugu had truly left an indelible shadow over these disciples of his.
"What are you talking about?"
Just then, a voice interrupted them.
They turned to see a female Daoist approaching.
The brothers remembered her. She was the one who had served them tea yesterday.
Seeing his savior arrive, Fang Ming hurriedly introduced her. "Martial uncles, this is my youngest junior brother, my master's only female disciple. Her name is Jiang Qinyue, and her Daoist name is Wangyu.
"Junior Brother, these are the two martial uncles from Taiqing Palace."
"This disciple greets her two martial uncles." Jiang Qinyue stepped forward and bowed.
In Daoist thinking, there was no concept of senior or junior martial sisters. Normally, everyone addressed one another as senior martial brothers regardless of gender.
But in this world, since it was a wuxia world, although the terms senior and junior martial sister still did not exist, fellow disciples did distinguish between elder and younger brothers.
It was perfectly reasonable for Fang Ming to call her his youngest junior brother.
"Hello."
After they exchanged greetings, Fang Ming asked, "Yue'er, what are you doing here? Isn't it your turn to go down the mountain for supplies today?"
Jiang Qinyue said, "Here's what happened. Master just said he obtained an internal cultivation manual and told me to notify all his direct disciples to gather in the rear hall."
"All right, I'll head over now."
"Mm, there's one more thing. Granduncle and Fourth Senior Brother have gone missing again. I've searched for ages and couldn't find them. Have you seen them, Third Senior Brother?"
Fang Ming shook his head. "No."
"Ah, they must have gone drinking down the mountain again."
"Go notify the others first. I'll head down the mountain and look for them now."
"All right."
Once they finished talking, Fang Ming said to Zhang Qingyuan and Zhang Junbao, "Sorry, martial uncles. I have something to take care of, so I'll be leaving first."
"Go ahead."
The two knew that the manual Old Chen had mentioned was the one they had given him yesterday.
After Fang Ming and Jiang Qinyue left, the two exchanged a look.
"What should we do?"
"We've seen all the front halls. Shall we take a look at the back mountain?"
"Let's go."
------Thanks for all your generous support, bosses! Could I ask for a little free gift? Kisses!