Promises of Future Rewards Worked

Fifty jin of rice went into the rice jar. Looking at the jar full of gleaming white rice, the impoverished Daoist felt a surge of joy. He wouldn't have to worry about going hungry for a while.

But there still weren't enough vegetables or meat.

Chen Du and his master used to go down the mountain to buy them. Though the temple was up in the mountains, it had a freezer that had cost a few hundred yuan. Later, they bought a secondhand electric tricycle, making trips down the mountain even easier.

Now, unexpectedly, he couldn't even leave the mountain.

Yunzhi was still unfamiliar with this world, and Chen Du was unfamiliar with her, so he hadn't asked her to buy too much that morning. For the next couple of days, he could only get extra protein from the eggs laid by the old hens he raised.

He opened WeChat.

Balance: 2,460.31.

That little bit of money was still earning interest in WeChat Pay Balance+.

It was everything he owned.

For a Daoist temple in such a remote location, having any savings at all was pretty good.

Even an official Daoist temple registered with the Daoist temple association received no government subsidies or anything of the sort. Its income depended entirely on its own operations. At most, some extremely impoverished elderly Daoist priests could apply for subsistence allowances or local assistance for people in extreme poverty, as regulations permitted. That was why many priests on short-video apps had started offering services such as taking on disciples and hosting short stays for quiet cultivation to generate income. Some offered online services too, and others simply became content creators. It was all for survival.

If they still couldn't make enough money, plenty of Daoists went out to work.

Many temples deep in the mountains had even fallen into disuse as a result, including some with histories stretching back over a thousand years.

So don't imagine that Daoist cultivators were somehow above worldly concerns, or that entering a temple to cultivate really meant living a carefree immortal's life.

Fortunately, Chen Du was young and quick-witted.

Since the temple had some history behind it, a few years ago, while his master was still alive, the local authorities had happened to try developing tourism. He had approached the local government and secured some funding for repairs. Master and disciple saved on all labor costs by doing everything themselves and made some proper repairs to the temple. With the money left over, he renovated two guest rooms-the lay devotees' quarters-and spruced up the main reception hall where they most often received visitors.

Occasionally, tourists or worshippers came up the mountain, and they could charge a little for a room. They would usually treat visitors to a vegetarian meal, and the visitors would leave a little incense money, adding to their income.

Along with the usual income a Daoist earned by going down the mountain to perform rituals and assess feng shui, it was more than enough to live on. Sometimes, when there was money left over, he saved a little. Once he had saved enough, he would even buy spicy gluten strips, soda and the like online.

Now all the income from going down the mountain was gone.

He had to think of something!

He also had to find a way to draw some knowledge of cultivation and spells out of that female yao.

Both the time he had first seen spiritual qi and the concentration of spiritual qi as it revived here were clearly far ahead of what was happening down the mountain. Add to that the fact that this temple was clearly extraordinary, and if he could get that knowledge out of her, there was no reason he couldn't use the opportunity to set foot on the legendary path of cultivation himself.

All sorts of thoughts wandered through Chen Du's mind.

Before he knew it, rain was pattering outside the window.

Sure enough, it rained that night. Weather forecasts were getting more and more accurate.

Yunzhi made her bed and found the quilt light, soft and warm, with a perfectly dry cover. She slept very comfortably.

But then she dreamed of the foot of the mountain.

A divine general sat atop that terrifying vehicle, clad in golden mountain-pattern armor and wielding a god-striking whip of lightning. Shouting that he would slay yao and exterminate demons, he pursued her relentlessly. The great vehicle crushed the ground out of shape, and its scorching breath set the roadside grass ablaze. It moved so fast that she couldn't escape at all.

Just as she was about to get struck by the truck of fortune, she finally woke up.

"Phew..."

Fortunately, it was only a dream.

Though it was only a dream, it brought back memories of her trip down the mountain that day. She felt she still had a great deal to learn.

At the same time, she remembered the immortal master.

She was so relieved now. Last night, as all sorts of thoughts had run through her mind in her room, she hadn't been able to discern any cultivation in the immortal master, nor had she seen him use any spells. As a result, she had idly wondered whether she should find a way to test him, perhaps by kicking him in the crotch to see if he would block it.

In the end, she hadn't done it.

For one thing, she wasn't sure whether someone with profound cultivation would still block a kick to the crotch. For another, if she guessed wrong, she was a yao herself. If she dared to offend an expert so rudely, she would surely have died then and there without a place to be buried.

Of course, the main reason was that it had only been a stray thought in the first place. She had merely been daydreaming and couldn't take it seriously.

Unable to sleep, she turned on the light.

The immortal master had given her a meditation room. It looked much like the guest room where she had spent the previous night, except that it also had a wooden wardrobe and a table.

To put her mind at ease, she made the bed neatly again and laid all the withered flowers she had received that day on it. Then she lay on her stomach on the bed, counting the petals one by one.

"Thirty-one, thirty-two..."

As she counted, she couldn't help laughing aloud.

Even the dust and dregs discarded from an immortal's abode were extraordinary.

What had the immortal master called these again?

Right! Trash?

There was clearly still some spiritual essence in this trash.

And there were a great many petals-a small pile of them.

She had only just awakened from her long sleep, and her cultivation and powers had suffered over those four hundred years. She urgently needed treasures to restore her cultivation. Otherwise, she wouldn't have left, only to regret it, give in to greed and come back to steal trash.

Especially now that she knew the mortal world below the mountain had changed completely.

The immortal master had said that the power of mortals now showed signs of rivaling that of the gods. All the more reason for her to recover her cultivation and magic quickly, so she could keep herself safe in such a world.

It would be even better if the immortal master could give her some guidance from time to time.

All sorts of thoughts wandered through Yunzhi's mind.

Before she knew it, mist was rising in the mountains.

Sure enough, it rained that night. The immortal master truly understood the heavens and predicted events like a god.

Wind and rain swept through the mountains that night, and Chen Du had a rather strange dream too.

In the dream, he was in the meditation room where he had lived before becoming the temple master, when his master was still alive. But it was noticeably emptier and cleaner than when he had lived there, seemingly just as it was now. A plain set of bedding had been laid on the bed, and a breathtakingly beautiful woman in palace robes sat cross-legged on it. Her left hand formed a spell seal, while her right pinched something, and she murmured to herself.

Chen Du could even hear what she was saying:

"Old friend, I have awakened.

"What I must tell you is that we have slept for over four hundred years, and the times have changed completely. The power of mortals now far exceeds what it once was.

"I don't know whether my luck was good or bad. I awoke just as the Awakening of Insects arrived. In my panic to escape the startling thunder, I came to a mountain, and the first buildings I saw happened to be a Daoist temple. The first person I met turned out to be an immortal expert who had survived the Age of Dharma Decline.

"At the very beginning of this revival of spiritual qi, the cat he keeps has actually gained spiritual intelligence, and a tree casually planted in his temple is an immortal tree and spiritual plant that you and I once searched everywhere for in vain. He himself possesses terrifying divine powers that can shake mountains and make the earth tremble!"

Chen Du saw that she held a bamboo leaf in her right hand, and a faint radiance shimmered on it.

She seemed to be using some kind of communication spell.

"Fortunately, he is a truly cultivated immortal master and mighty expert, with extraordinary virtue and forbearance. Though I offended him, he took no offense and instead gave me a treasure called 'trash' to help me restore my cultivation.

"For now, I am staying here.

"Without the immortal master's permission, I should not reveal the location of his immortal abode to you. If fate allows, we shall surely drink and make merry together again, and reminisce about old times.

"If I conduct myself well, perhaps the immortal master will deign to grant me some immortal fruit. If there is enough to spare, I will save one for you.

"I am sending this message to the place where you sleep. You will see it when you awaken.

"Oh, right. There is something in the mortal world now that the immortal master calls a 'dump truck.' Its weight is measured in hundreds of thousands of jin. Be careful if you encounter one. When walking on a main road, stay at the edge, not in the middle. At a crossing with lights, you can only cross when the light is green. You must not cross when it is red. I suspect there may be some kind of restriction on them.

"I wish you peace and well-being!"

When the woman finished, she blew on the bamboo leaf in her hand. It instantly became an insect resembling both a locust and a praying mantis, bamboo-green from end to end. The thin blade of the leaf became its wings, while the stem in the middle became its body. Seemingly carrying the woman's message to her old friend, it fluttered its wings, flew straight out the window and vanished into the night sky.

The dream ended there, and by the time Chen Du woke, it was already morning.

Had it been a dream or reality?

For a moment, Chen Du couldn't tell.

On the one hand, he already knew that both this mountain and this temple were extraordinary, so it was normal for strange things to happen here. He couldn't simply decide something was impossible because it was bizarre. On the other hand, dreams were unpredictable to begin with, and it was normal to dream of anything at all. He had met a female yao and had magic on his mind, so it made even more sense for him to dream about such things.

He sat on the bed pondering for a long time, but still couldn't be sure.

"I'll test her in a bit."

Chen Du was gradually growing less afraid of the female yao.

Fear was no use, and he couldn't run away anyway.

Besides, cowardice often came with indecision. Once he had made up his mind, courage naturally followed.

He had briefly gained the upper hand in his contest with the female yao. Now he had to hold on to that advantage.

The trouble was that it was hard to strike the right balance in how he treated her.

He shouldn't treat her too well.

Nor should he treat her too badly.

Either could lead to unforeseen consequences.

Ji Xiaolan, a renowned Qing-dynasty official, once told a story:

There was a cultivator named Perfected Zhang-though it wasn't certain whether he was an ordained Daoist. He was so capable that even his servants were ghosts and gods. Yet Ji Xiaolan also said this was a groundless tale based on hearsay, and that the man himself didn't actually possess such great divine powers.

But Perfected Zhang put on a convincing act and managed the balance superbly. He was also a man of good character, so his lies were never exposed, and his reputation only grew.

When Ji Xiaolan served as education commissioner in Fujian, an old servant named Wei Cheng was plagued by a yao every night. One day, drunk, he angrily declared that his master knew Celestial Master Zhang, and that tomorrow he would ask Celestial Master Zhang to summon the gods of the Thunder Ministry to come after it. As soon as he said that, no yao ever bothered him again, for yao feared Celestial Master Zhang's name too.

Chen Du didn't know whether spiritual qi, cultivators, yao and ghosts had still existed in the world during that era, and he couldn't be sure whether the story was true. Ji Xiaolan might have made it up, but it still made some sense.

That counted as a successful example.

There was also a story in the "Biographies of Masters of Esoteric Arts" in the Book of the Later Han. During the Eastern Han, there was a master of esoteric arts named Fei Changfang who studied the Dao under an immortal. Daoism in its present sense might not even have been established at the time, so the Dao he cultivated was not necessarily that of present-day Daoism.

He had a talisman that could command ghosts, and he became an immortal expert thanks to it. Yet he was extremely harsh with the ghosts under his command. Later, he accidentally lost the talisman, and the ghosts he had once controlled immediately swarmed him and killed him.

That was a cautionary example.

So there really were quite a few such cases in ancient times, and even more countless were the yao and ghosts who pretended to be gods.

Chen Du resolved to draw on history's experience and lessons and proceed gradually.

As for how he should pose as an accomplished cultivator...

There was actually no need to pretend anymore.

All sorts of things had already vouched for him. At this point, the best disguise was not to put on an act. The most natural thing was to be himself; trying too hard might instead give him away.

As he pondered, the rustle of a spotted bamboo broom against the concrete sounded outside again, echoing through the mountains.

The woman had gotten up to sweep again.

Not only that, Chen Du could actually smell a waft of congee.

She seemed to have become more diligent.

It looked like promises of future rewards worked!