Chapter 51 Past Events

Old man Yao has lived his whole life and claims to have seen many storms and waves, but he has never seen the technique of turning boiling water into ice.

On the beam, the crow looked from afar for a long time, and finally couldn't help but fly to the counter to take a closer look.

The dark cloud wanted to take the opportunity to pounce on it, but the crow easily waved it away with its wings.

Old man Yao looked up at Chen Ji and asked, "What's the reason for this?"

Chen Ji is in trouble.

When the temperature of a saturated solution drops, the solubility decreases and crystals precipitate.

This was a very simple sentence for him, but if he wanted to explain it to the people of Ning Dynasty, he would probably have to start from a very long time ago.

Old man Yao moved the small crystal. How come a bowl of water boiled over and over again turned into ice? But it didn't feel cold to the touch.

"Boy, what is this?" Old Man Yao asked puzzledly.

Chen Ji smiled and said, "It's what you just said, a strong and domineering thing."

Old Man Yao was even more confused: "Where did you learn alchemy from, Huangshan or Laojun Mountain? But those Taoists wouldn't pass on such things... Could it be Wuji Mountain or Taiji Mountain?"

Chen Ji was silent. He couldn't explain where he learned it from.

Old Man Yao sneered: "Okay, then don't tell me... I just want to ask you, how powerful is this thing?"

Chen Ji thought for a moment and said conservatively: "...It hasn't been made yet. If it is made, it should be no problem to destroy a building, right?"

Old man Yao stroked his beard and seemed to be considering his tone as he advised: "Although our art is also known as 'Dragon Swallowing', you have to take your time and not rush into it. When you have learned the medical skills, many officials will ask you to come and see them when they are dying. Don't rush into anything, because you will lose more if you are greedy."

Chen Ji understood. His master was worried that he would go crazy and use this thing to murder officials of the Ning Dynasty to obtain the Ice Flow...

He quickly said, "Master, I am not doing this to speed up my cultivation. I am doing this to protect myself."

"Oh..." Old Man Yao nodded and lay back on the bamboo chair: "That's good, you can continue."

In the main hall, there is an old man leisurely sitting on a recliner, a young man working with his sleeves rolled up, and crows and cats chasing and playing around. Everything is quiet.

Chen Ji suddenly said: "Master, thank you."

"Thank me?" Old Man Yao raised his eyebrows. "Did I charge you six taels of silver make you stupid? Don't get mad in the middle of the night. I won't return the money. Don't play the emotional card."

Chen Ji smiled and asked, "Master, God created the grass and the grass is still dark. It is difficult for the hard and soft to come into being. It moves in danger, and the water and thunder gather. How do you interpret this hexagram?"

This was the divination that Old Man Yao had given before Chen Ji went to Wanxing Garden.

Old man Yao lay on a bamboo chair, swaying with his eyes closed. After a long while, he said, "New opportunities are born in desperate situations. Those who get this hexagram will live in the face of death."

Chen Ji nodded: "So, when you went to Wanxing Garden that night, it was not because you were afraid of danger, but because you predicted that you would get ice flow on that trip."

Old Man Yao did not answer.

Chen Ji continued, "You said to stay away from danger, but you still came to save me that night when I was at Zhou Chengyi's house."

Moreover, this master appears cold but is actually warm-hearted. If he really didn't care about the matter, how could he allow Liang Gou'er to live in the clinic and teach him how to practice swordsmanship?
The clinic was quiet and peaceful. Crow looked at Chen Ji quietly, with approval in his eyes.

But Old Man Yao said, "This is all your own guess. Don't let your imagination run wild at such a young age."

Chen Ji said seriously: "No matter what you say, thank you."

"Why thank me? Just don't hate me in the future," said old man Yao.

"Hate you?"

Old Man Yao laughed: "Do you think it's a good thing that I gave you the way to practice? When we were young, we all thought that as long as we had the ability to transcend the mundane world, we could become great heroes in this world. But what do you think the way to practice is? It is a curse and a cage that traps the officials of the world."

Chen Ji remained silent.

Old Man Yao sighed, "After the cultivation path was established, the master had to guard against the apprentice, the father had to guard against the son, and the elder brother had to guard against the younger brother. A good family was torn apart. Do you think Liang Gou'er is happy? If he was happy, he wouldn't need to drink... And what you should worry about now is what to do if you encounter other officials who practice the 'Mountain King' path again."

Chen Ji muttered quietly: "Why didn't you kill them all before passing them to me? There are still some sequelae..."

Old Man Yao glared: "You still blame me for this? What should I do? Now give me 100,000 taels of silver and I will kill him for you!"

Chen Ji changed the subject: "How many tigers do you think are out there?"

Old Man Yao thought for a moment, "How many fires can you light with one ginseng?"

"Two."

Old Man Yao closed his eyes and said lightly on the recliner: "This is easy to calculate. Before you became a tiger king, I could light three fires with one ginseng... Then, there should be only one tiger king left outside. After I die, you can light three fires with one ginseng. If you kill the other tiger king, you can light six fires with one ginseng. Are you tempted?"

It turns out that the impact of changes in the number of people on spiritual practice is so direct.

When he thought of this, Old Man Yao slowly sat up and looked at Chen Ji in doubt: "You made this strong and domineering thing, you didn't use it to deal with me, did you?!" Chen Ji didn't know whether to laugh or cry: "What are you thinking, I will definitely not stab you in the back, don't worry."

Old Man Yao did not comment: "People's hearts are hidden in their stomachs. Only you know what you are thinking."

Chen Ji leaned on the counter while purifying saltpeter and thought that his master was actually not as cold as he seemed. However, no matter who wanted to approach him, he would keep them at a distance.

"Master, did you do it yourself..." Chen Ji stopped talking halfway because he didn't know if he could ask.

But old man Yao said calmly: "You want to ask me if I killed my own son? Yes. This question has been in your mind for a long time, and you finally couldn't help asking me."

"Why did you kill him?"

Old man Yao sneered, "Because I think he was delaying my progress in cultivation. Although the imperial physician does not live on salary, he can collect several hundred taels of silver from the consultation fees of dignitaries every year, but how can he afford the money spent by the mountain monk sect? One less fellow practitioner means less money. So, I killed him with my own hands."

Chen Ji had just finished purifying all the saltpeter. He picked up a rag to wipe his hands and threw it on the counter: "You don't have to scare me. If you were that kind of person, you wouldn't have passed on the inheritance to him so early."

……

……

Old man Yao closed his eyes and remained silent for a long time: "I have no wife, no son, no daughter in my life. In the twelfth month of the fourteenth year of Zhengde, I was on my way home from my duty at the Imperial Hospital. It started snowing heavily. I saw a little beggar freezing under the eaves. At that time, I was kind-hearted, so I brought him a bowl of hot ginger soup from home."

"When the little beggar woke up, he begged me to take him in. I asked him how he became a beggar. He said his parents died in forced labor and he was driven out of the house by his uncle and aunt."

"I was unmarried at the time, so I was hesitant about taking in a beggar. I had just started learning divination, and I got bad results every time ten times. But I thought it was because I was not good enough, so I didn't believe it. Finally, I decided to take a gamble on fate and asked him about his birth date."

"Born at 3:30 pm on the twelfth day of the twelfth lunar month in the fourth year of the Zhengde reign," Old Man Yao sighed, "It just happened to be that he was born at the time when the Tiger Sect was being passed down. I thought at the time that this might be fate bestowed by God, so I raised him as a son."

At this time, Chen Ji had stopped what he was doing, sat cross-legged on the ground next to the rocking chair, listening quietly, with dark clouds squatting on his shoulders.

Old man Yao continued slowly, "I had no intention of seeking immortality, so I taught him the way of the mountain king when he was sixteen years old. I remember that the first dragon energy he absorbed came from Yang Jiancheng of the Ministry of Works."

"The child is very smart. He can learn anything quickly. He learned good medical skills from me. There are many dignitaries in the capital. When I am too busy, I let him go to see patients. But I gradually found that none of the officials who were critically ill treated by him could be saved. I began to suspect that I would go to my house at night to verify it... Liu Yushi of the Inspectorate suffered from emphysema, which was obviously curable, but he prescribed a poisonous prescription."

"He is too smart. He is so smart that he has learned pharmacology thoroughly. Even if he prescribes a poison that counteracts the other doctors, they will not be able to find it. This person, once he is too smart, will easily take shortcuts..."

"I scolded him and made him kneel in the snow for three days and three nights. He knelt and cried and admitted his fault. I thought he was sincerely repentant, so I didn't send him to the Dali Temple. But because of his soft heart, he committed a heinous mistake."

"In the following year, he acted more covertly, even secretly poisoning my food. My first crow was killed by him."

After saying that, Old Man Yao looked at the crow in the clinic and said, "The first one accompanied me for twenty-one years, and this is the second one, which has been with me for fifty-three years."

The crow flapped its wings and landed on Old Man Yao's shoulder, using its beak to gently comb Old Man Yao's white hair. The dark cloud also jumped onto the armrest of the recliner and patted the back of Old Man Yao's hand with its furry claws.

Chen Ji asked curiously: "What happened next? What happened after you were poisoned?"

Old Man Yao shook his head: "I don't want to talk about it anymore. I'm tired."

Old Man Yao didn't say what happened after he was poisoned, nor did he say how he killed his adopted son. It seemed that there were other secrets hidden.

Chen Ji suddenly recalled that on the night he left Zhou's house, Old Man Yao had divined to avoid the little beggar. It turned out that the heavy snow in December of the 14th year of Zhengde had chilled the old man's heart.

All the passion and kindness in this world always seem to turn into a sigh.

Old man Yao opened his eyes and looked at Chen Ji. In his vicissitudes and calm eyes, he seemed to be looking at another person through Chen Ji, and also seemed to be looking at his former self through Chen Ji.

Old man Yao slowly stood up and went back to the house: "Don't worry, I won't bother you for too long. You and I don't need to have a master-disciple relationship."

When Old Man Yao disappeared through the main door, Wuyun meowed, "He's afraid you'll be the next beggar."

Chen Ji hummed: "No."

Old man Yao brought him to the side of Prince Jing's Mansion, and carefully arranged for him to collect the Ice Flow. He also took in Liang Gou'er and taught him swordsmanship. No matter what the other party's attitude was, Chen Ji would never forget what the other party had done for him.

and many more.

Yun Yang said that Old Man Yao was highly respected in the Imperial Hospital of the capital, but he suddenly chose to come to Luocheng and live next to Prince Jing's Mansion...

Prince Jing's Mansion?!

Chen Ji suddenly realized something: according to his speculation, Old Man Yao wanted to find another apprentice before he died and pass on the tiger skills.

But how can I make my apprentice grow quickly? I need to quickly obtain the ice flow.

If it were anyone else, they would just have to take their chances and wait for the nobles to die.

But Old Man Yao is proficient in divination, so he can naturally calculate accurately where there will be disasters and where to absorb the ice flow!
Old man Yao suddenly resigned from his post and came to Luocheng. It must be that the other party calculated that there would be a disaster in Prince Jing’s Mansion!

……

Today's Chapter

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