Under One Person: The Seeker of the Dao in the Lü Family

Chapter 35 Seeking Within, The Changes of the Heavenly Cycle

Standing in front of the small wooden cabin in the woods, Zhou Meng looked at Lü Qian's slightly immature face and couldn't help but feel a sense of emotion.

Wudang Mountain sacrificed three experienced elders for the Feng Hou Qi Men technique, but unexpectedly, it turned out that a young Taoist priest who was not proficient in Qi Men actually mastered it.

It's truly amazing how fate can be so capricious!

"Alright, come in with me."

Zhou Meng turned around and led Lü Qian into the wooden house.

After placing the food on the table, Lü Qian asked Zhou Meng, "Grand Tutor, where shall I sleep tonight?"

He glanced around Zhou Meng's room; the furnishings were rather simple and shabby.

"It's all prepared for you, here you go."

As he spoke, Zhou Meng brought a bedding set to Lü Qian and handed it to him.

"It's starting to get cooler these days, so just take this bedding and make a makeshift bed on the floor. As for sleeping? With your level of meditation skills, you can certainly use quiet contemplation instead of sleep for a while."

"You can cultivate here with me for the time being."

Lu Qian took the bedding Zhou Meng handed him and made a makeshift bed in the corner where Zhou Meng pointed. "Yes, Grand Tutor!"

After setting up the bedding on the floor, Lü Qian went to the table and opened the food he had brought. "Grand Tutor, here you go!"

"Um."

Zhou Meng took the chopsticks handed to him by Lü Qian and began to eat the congee.

Lu Qian held a white steamed bun in his hand, with a few vegetable leaves inside. He took a big bite, chewed it, and quickly swallowed it.

While eating his steamed bun, Lü Qian looked up at the leisurely Zhou Meng and asked, "Grand Tutor, you just said you would teach me how to be a sorcerer?"

"Um."

Zhou Meng answered again indifferently, his head down as he carefully ate the food in front of him, not even glancing at the thoughtful expression on Lü Qian's face.

As Lü Qian pondered the question, he took another bite of his steamed bun. "So, Master, you understand magic?"

Zhou Meng rolled his eyes upon hearing this, somewhat speechless. "Of course, Taoist cultivation can be summarized into five branches: Mountain, Medicine, Destiny, Physiognomy, and Divination. I have been practicing for decades and have read many Taoist texts. I have studied these."

As he spoke, he swallowed a mouthful of porridge. "For us Taoist priests living in the mountains, divination is a skill we're good at. When pilgrims come to ask for divination slips, we have to interpret their fortunes and tell them their stories."

"Your grandmaster is quite proficient in divination, otherwise why have all the pilgrims who come to the mountain to fulfill their vows become either extremely wealthy or extremely noble over the years?"

At this point, a slightly smug smile appeared on Zhou Meng's face.

Lu Qian finished eating the steamed bun in his hand and was about to grab another one when he said, "Is it possible that only those who are extremely wealthy and powerful dare not come to Wudang Mountain to see you, a high-ranking official?"

Zhou Meng wasn't angry. He smiled and looked at Lü Qian, "You're such a chatterbox! Fate is determined by heaven, but things can be accomplished by human effort."

"I've only explained their current fate, but fate is something that, besides being predetermined, is also influenced by human actions."

"Eat up. After you finish eating, I'll take you to the library to get some books related to divination and divination techniques. You can look at them and learn a thing or two."

Zhou Meng put down the empty bowl he had finished eating from and placed his chopsticks on the rim of the bowl.

He sat cross-legged on the chair, watching with a smile as Lü Qian wolfed down his food.

"it is good."

Upon hearing this, Lü Qian quickened his pace.

"Eat slowly, be careful not to choke."

……

After lunch, Zhou Meng took Lü Qian to the library of Wudang and picked out several textbooks on Qimen Dunjia for him.

The two quickly returned to the cabin in the mountains.

This time, Lü Qian sat cross-legged on his bedding in the corner, flipping through the scriptures in his hand, beginning to expand his knowledge in this area.

Zhou Meng sat on the bed, meditating with his eyes closed.

After flipping through the textbook in his hand for a while, Lü Qian looked up at Zhou Meng on the bed and said, "Grand Tutor, I have a question."

Upon hearing this, Zhou Meng opened his eyes. "Speak."

Lu Qian closed the book in his hand, "Now I also understand the operating principle of Qimen Dunjia."

"The so-called Qimen is a method used by sorcerers to study the way of heaven and call upon the power of heaven and earth by taking time and space as their starting point."

"In normal Qimen Dunjia, the spells are performed with the help of heaven and earth. Humans are merely the craftsmen who transport the creations of heaven and earth. Standing in the fire position, one receives the assistance of fire; standing in the wind position, one receives the assistance of wind."

Zhou Meng nodded, affirming Lü Qian's statement, but Lü Qian changed the subject, "This is also how Grandmaster Hong Yin of the back mountain used 'Feng Hou Qi Men', but I always feel that something is wrong."

Zhou Meng's relaxed expression suddenly turned somewhat serious.

Although he didn't understand "Feng Hou Qi Men", he could glean some of its dangers from his fellow disciples who had gone mad in the back mountains, which was why he was afraid of "Feng Hou Qi Men".

He gestured for Lü Qian to continue, "Go on."

Lu Qian nodded. "Grand Master, you probably haven't seen the Feng Hou Tu. There's a general principle of Feng Hou Qi Men on it: 'The innate leads the Zhou Tian, ​​covering the changes of the Zhou Tian, ​​transforming me into a king.'"

"If we understand it according to the traditional sorcerer's mindset, this general principle means this: use one's own innate Qi to govern the changes in the external world, thereby mastering all changes within this universe, then I am the king of this universe."

"Using Feng Hou Qi Men according to this interpretation, only when one's own Qi Men pattern is large enough to cover the whole world can one truly become king."

"But isn't that a bit unrealistic?"

"How so?"

Zhou Meng had never studied the Feng Hou Tu. Now, as he listened to Lü Qian's explanation of the general outline, he felt that there were indeed many questions about it.

"The universe is vast and boundless, while the human body is small and weak. If Feng Hou Qi Men wants to cover the whole world, even the most powerful cultivator would not be able to do so."

"Moreover, the changes in heaven and earth are so complex that it is far too impossible for a human being to control all the changes in this world."

As Su Dongpo wrote in his "Ode to the Red Cliff": "If we look at things from the perspective of change, then even heaven and earth cannot last for an instant; if we look at things from the perspective of permanence, then both things and I are endless."

"Human beings are finite, but the universe is infinite. To use the finite to measure the infinite is simply impossible, isn't it?"

After Lu Qian finished speaking, he stopped and looked at the silent Zhou Meng, who sat quietly in the corner without saying a word.

After a long silence, Zhou Meng revealed a relieved expression. "Hehe, we all overcomplicated things!"

"Your ancestors and I broke the sorcerer's vow; we were too arrogant."

Lu Qian watched quietly as Zhou Meng gradually calmed down.

"That's enough, I can't tell you too much right now."

Zhou Meng waved his hand, afraid that his words would affect Lü Qian, and quickly stopped talking. "What do you want to do? Since we can't seek external change, we can only seek internal change."

Lü Qian nodded. "Yes, the Yellow Emperor's Inner Classic says: 'The universe is a vast universe, and the human body is a microcosm.'"

"Although the human body is smaller than the external universe, in terms of integrity, the human body can be equivalent to the universe."

"If one seeks internal transformation, the general principle of Feng Hou Qi Men is understood entirely differently: using one's own innate Qi to govern all changes throughout the body, thereby mastering all changes in one's own structure and becoming the king of one's own body and mind!"

At this point, Lü Qian couldn't help but marvel at the wonders of nature.

The human body, like heaven and earth, possesses the structure and characteristics of yin and yang, the five elements, the four qi, and the eight trigrams, and its form also resembles heaven and earth. The circulation of qi and fluids in the human body is consistent with that of heaven and earth, the sun and the moon; the twelve hours of a day correspond to the twelve months of a year; the three hundred and sixty meridians in the body correspond to the three hundred and sixty days of a year; the distance between the heart and kidneys is eight and four-tenths inches, which is the ratio of the positioning of heaven and earth; the circulation of qi and fluids in the body during a day is the same as the circulation of qi in heaven and earth during a year.

Lu Qian scratched his head, somewhat embarrassed, and said, "Although I have determined the direction of the internal transformation, I have only been practicing for a few years, and I have been focusing on cultivation all along. I do not yet have a good understanding of the structure of human body numerology. I am not sure how to proceed with this internal transformation method. Please teach me, Grand Master."

A true word is passed on, and a thousand volumes of books are falsely passed on.

As a highly skilled practitioner who had cultivated for decades, Zhou Meng naturally understood the operating principle of the Internal Transformation Feng Hou Qi Men after hearing Lü Qian's explanation. "Alright, now that you put it this way, I understand the key points of Feng Hou Qi Men. It's easy to teach you this way."

Although Qimen Dunjia divination is complex, its operation does indeed refer to the rhythm of the universe, that is, the "changes of the heavens and earth".

"Zhou Tian" has multiple meanings, but Qimen divination uses the solar terms of heaven and earth as a reference.

A year has 360 days, divided into five hou (候), three hou (气), six qi (时), and four shi (时) to form a year.

There are twenty-four solar terms, which are further divided into seventy-two pentads.

The seventy-two pentads of these twenty-four solar terms rotate continuously, which is also the rhythm of the operation of heaven and earth.