Chapter 220: People’s Desire (Part 3)
After the meeting, Gao Pang went out with a gloomy face. Huo Chong's subordinates were quite hostile to him, and they mocked Gao Pang for not having any real ability.
After sitting in his room angrily for a long time, Gao Pang made up his mind and stood up to see Huo Chong. When he was led in, he saw Huo Chong reviewing documents. Seeing Huo Chong looking at the documents calmly, Gao Pang was shocked. This was the future he was most looking forward to, holding a high position and holding great power. Even if he went to Beijing to assassinate the emperor, he was still calm and composed, as if he was just going out for a spring outing.
After watching in silence for a while, Huo Chong finished reviewing a document, put down his pen, looked up and asked, "What do you want to say?"
"Captain. I want to do something concrete."
"Okay. You have learned something, and you should try to see if what you learned is correct."
Gao Pang felt a little belittled when he heard this. He couldn't help but ask, "Isn't what the governor teaches wrong?"
"Haha. You can tell what a scholar says. Transcendentalism!" Huo Chong laughed.
Gao Pang was startled, and his heart was deeply moved by these words. "Please teach me, sir."
"How about this. I think you have a good understanding. Go and pay a visit to Master Changxin and see if you can make a breakthrough by following his ideas."
“…I want to do something concrete.”
"Then go and pay your respects to Master Changxin first, and then I'll assign you a task."
With Huo Chong's instructions, Gao Pang went to meet Taoist Changxin. Taoist Changxin had a large village in Linzi, which was the house of the annihilated Jinshi family. When he was invited into the house by the Taoist, he saw many star maps hanging everywhere.
"The Taoist priest is stargazing?"
"Brother Gao also understands this?"
Gao Pang quickly replied politely: "I have only heard of experts who understand this, but I didn't expect to meet an expert like the Taoist today."
"You are not saying what you mean. Brother, you can believe it if you want to, or not if you don't want to. What you said you heard is just a lie to fool me."
Gao Pang was speechless after hearing such frank words. He suddenly felt that Master Changxin and Huo Chong were surprisingly similar in some ways.
After thinking for a while, Gao Pang simply asked, "Master, can you tell me what you have seen I just want to hear something new."
"The Ziwei star has undergone drastic changes, the Emperor star has fallen, and the destiny has completely shifted." Master Changxin described what he had seen frankly.
Gao Pang thought for a while and asked tentatively: "Is it because Yongzheng died?"
"How did you learn this from Huo Chong? It's a pity that he praised you for your talent!"
Despite such ruthless criticism, Gao Pang felt as if he had grabbed a life-saving straw and quickly bowed and saluted, "Please give me some advice, Taoist priest."
"Is the advice... useful?" Master Chang Xin sighed. But after a moment, he sighed again, "What do you think Huo Chong would say if he heard what I just said?"
“…I don’t know.”
"If it was Huo Chong, he would either say nothing or ask what the Purple Star Change is and what the shift in luck is."
Gao Pang was a little confused, and this answer sounded perfunctory. However, this answer was indeed of a higher standard than Gao Pang's.
"Fool! Everyone is swept up by the Tao. Wherever the Tao goes , we are taken there. What we see is the Tao we have obtained. Huo Chong has his own Tao, and I have my own Tao. It doesn't matter if it's right or wrong. Either ignore it, or learn from it. A fool like you uses what others have seen to explain and prove your Tao. There is nothing more stupid than this!"
Gao Pang shuddered again, and once again felt as if he had been enlightened. But when he tried to verify what the Taoist priest said with his own state of mind, he found that it was irrelevant, as if there was an invisible but extremely strong barrier blocking it. It was clearly a new realm within his sight, but he just couldn't get through it.
"Master, Mr. Huo asked me to ask you for advice..."
"Idiot! What's the point of saying this? Are you trying to scare me?" Master Changxin interrupted Gao Pang with a frown.
Gao Pang just felt aggrieved. Was it wrong to ask for advice in front of Master Changxin?
Master Changxin was also very unhappy, but he calmed down and sighed, "Boy, among the scholars I have met, Huo Chong is the one who really understands it. After hearing Huo Chong talk about some things about Yongzheng, I think Yongzheng is also one of them. Huo Chong said that this is called reforming oneself. Let's just use his words. In addition, there is the little girl Qian Qing, who has the Seven Killings fate. Although she suffered a great disaster, she did not die, but met Huo Chong. The Seven Killings met Ziwei and turned into power. This little girl is generous and decisive when encountering things. She is considered half a person. No matter what their reasons are, there is one thing that is very admirable. Wherever the Tao leads them, they insist on going according to the Tao they have obtained. They never ask where the future is, and they don't care where they are now. You scholars are inexplicable . Whatever you read and learn is right or wrong. We have only picked up a little bit of the Tao. If we say right or wrong, it is all absurd. Which sentence of the Confucian discussion you read has not been proven to be wrong?"
Gao Pang was not happy to be attacked for his Confucianism. "Master, your words are profound. I really admire them. But when I read what Confucianism said, I felt that I could relate to it. It opened my eyes."
"What makes you suddenly enlightened is the description. Just a few words tell the story of the time, and of course you think it is correct. But none of those arguments have been proven wrong. How can you be right if you keep holding on to old things that happened thousands of years ago and try to find a sword by carving a mark on a boat?"
Gao Pang was stunned. Suddenly, the invisible barrier seemed to break. The old man in front of him, who seemed to be only capable of doing weird things, actually told Gao Pang the truth that the Jiangnan scholars had never said.
What resonated with Gao Pang was not the profound meaning of the saints’ words, but the inner things in those short descriptions, which gave Gao Pang insights. And these insights just happened to be similar or close to the profound meaning of the saints’ words.
When everything suddenly became clear to him, Gao Pang turned over and knelt down to thank Master Changxin.
Before Gao Pang could speak, Master Chang Xin said, "Boy, I don't know what you understand. No need to tell me, no need to thank me. It has nothing to do with me. Get up, I have something for you to do."
Gao Pang quickly responded, "Please give your instructions, Taoist Priest." After saying that, he stood up.
"I'm too lazy to write. Huo Chong is also a scholar, and he can only understand the language used by you scholars. I will tell you what I saw when I observed the sky, and you write it down and give it to him."
"You are a fool. If I remember it wrong..."
"You wrote it wrong. That's Huo Chong's fate. I'm too lazy to tell Huo Chong. Even for him, it's just a waste of words. It's irrelevant."
Gao Pang couldn't understand it for a moment. But after thinking about it carefully, he suddenly understood and laughed, "Haha, it's destined to be like this. It's destined to be like this. Wonderful! Therefore, always be without, so as to observe its wonders, and always be with, so as to observe its boundaries. These two things come from the same source but have different names. They are both called mysterious, and the more mysterious, the more mysterious they are, the door to all wonders."
