CHAPTER 47 - Extra 5
Apr. 30th, 2020 06:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
theysayivemetaghostPrevious Chapter
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The Maoshan Sect had a political teacher.
There was actually nothing strange about this. Many large private and state-owned enterprises currently attached great importance to political education. In its capacity as a large-scale tourist attraction, there was absolutely nothing remarkable about the employees in the Maoshan Sect's scenic area receiving some ideological and political education.
But for the inner disciples — those who daily studied the Tao Te Ching, the Maoshan Sect's secret writings, the Record of a Hundred Ghosts, the sixty-four trigrams of the I-Ching, the Tui Bei Tu, ancient and modern arrays and all manner of subjects like that — the traditional Daoists, for them to suddenly also have to take a political class, the sort of political class where they had to keep up with the country's current affairs and politics and write reflections on whatever conferences there were... didn't there seem to be something wrong with this picture?
The disciples protested against the political class many times, and even jointly wrote to the assembly of the sect elders, but they were all turned down.
The political teacher, Shen Jianguo, was a serious, earnest, extremely conscientious person. He gave a quiz every three days and a test every five. Some of the disciples took the questions for the national civil service exam and completed them in time. They found that their written examinations could get them high marks. If not for the fact that their academic records were insufficient, they would have been able to have careers as civil servants.
But they were future Daoists! Why should they have to test for civil service?
They were different from ordinary people. They were disciples who had seen with their own eyes that ghosts existed. They were a group of people who struggled in the shadows to guard the world. They were so great — why did they have to study politics?
They really didn't want to remember the significance of some assembly of some committee's plenary session!
Nearly a hundred students gathered together to plan to teach Teacher Shen a lesson. Their politics grades wouldn't impact the completion of their apprenticeships; they weren't afraid of Teacher Shen giving them bad grades.
Some disciples made inquiries. The reason for Teacher Shen's great power within the Maoshan Sect was that he and Ning Tiance, the chief disciple of the Maoshan sect and the designated future sect leader, had a relationship of a delicate nature. The word was that Ning Tiance was a rare talent, not seen at the Maoshan Sect in a thousand years. In order to persuade him to stay, Sect Leader Ning had reluctantly agreed to let him use his power for personal gain and bring Teacher Shen to work at the Maoshan Sect so the two of them could conveniently date.
After their discussion, these good for nothing disciples raised a stink in class.
"This whole class is asking to go on vacation together?" Teacher Shen stared at the note.
"Teacher Shen, we have an important task to do," said Lou Taichu, the head of the class and the leader of the plot. “Some time ago, while developing a natural oxygen bar tourist attraction in G Province, the developers discovered a mass grave dating back to an unknown period. Without performing a rite, the developers dug up the bones and sent them to a crematorium to be burned. Now the tourist site gets daily hauntings, and the developers are so poor they can't afford to buy pants. They specially requested that we Maoshan disciples come at once. Since it was a mass grave, there must be many resentful spirits, so I decided to take all the disciples along. We need to take a month off."
"A month! You'll fall very far behind on your school work." Teacher Shen's face was troubled. "How about you do it during a public holiday?"
"No need, no need," Lou Taichu said immediately. "In fact, we only need a long time to prepare. Teacher Shen can come with us, and even enjoy the natural oxygen bar at the same time."
"Oh... Wait while I consider it."
The outcome of Teacher Shen's considerations was to take Ning Tiance with him. He could avoid missing class and take his boyfriend on vacation; what was there against it? The disciples had expected this; when the time came they could delay Chief Disciple Ning and take Teacher Shen to a seriously haunted location to scare him.
Chief Disciple Ning didn't refuse, so scores of disciples packed themselves into a hard seat carriage, and everyone happily went off to their destination. Only Teacher Shen held his back and complained about the Maoshan Sect's obsession with hard seats. If they had the money to buy out a whole car, why not make it a sleeper? His back hurt.
Chief Disciple Ning massaged his back for him and let him lie in his lap. There were plenty of seats, so the two of them took up a seat meant for three people and fooled around.
When they arrived at their destination, one of the students cornered Chief Disciple Ning while the others took Teacher Shen hiking, promising to write about the experience, in this way finally managing to separate the two of them.
Seeing them going in the direction of the mass grave, Chief Disciple Ning seemed to want to say something, but he was interrupted by the disciple and finally kept quiet.
Everyone had settled things. As soon as they reached the haunted place, they would scatter, leaving Teacher Shen alone. They would wait for the ghosts to scare him to tears, then appear to save him. This way, Teacher Shen would understand that they were future protecters of the human world from evil and wouldn't make them memorize political questions again!
After Lou Taichu and the other disciples scattered, they gathered at a pre-arranged location to keep an ear out for Teacher Shen's screams.
"Lou-shixiong, why is it getting colder and colder? The Yin energy is very strong," a disciple surnamed Lin said, rubbing his arms. "Shixiong, my back feels like there's a weight on it. Who's pressing on me? I can't take it."
All the disciples dimly felt something had gone wrong. They looked over and saw a bloody head on Lin-shidi's back, grinning at them.
It wasn't just Lin-shidi. Half of the disciples had been beset by incomplete figures. Some had no head, some had no hands or feet. The most nauseating were the ghosts with their guts hanging out, all covered in blood.
The disciples knew that the blood was only an illusion. The ones who hadn't been possessed set up an array at once. They hadn't expected the mass grave to date back to before the founding of the People's Republic. These ghosts had died miserably. Their resentment was very powerful, far exceeding the disciples' strength.
"Quick, quick, someone run and ask Chief Disciple Ning to come!" Lou Taichu said hurriedly.
Their phone signals were blocked, and on top of that they ran into a ghost maze. They couldn't get out at all! With these ghosts sticking to them, when dawn came, the humans and ghosts would switch places. They would become crippled ghosts, while these fierce ghosts would use their identities to live on.
"Lou-shixiong, what do we do?" Lin-shidi was the youngest, only fifteen. The ghost's head had sunk halfway into his body. He couldn't move at all and was so scared he started to cry.
Lou Taichu didn't know what to do. He was principally responsible for this. They had deliberately gotten Chief Disciple Ning, who was the most powerful, out of the way, and now that they had run into this predicament, none of them could get out.
And if the disciples with their powers were in this state, then Teacher Shen, who was an ordinary person and had been left alone, had probably already come to grief.
"We just wanted to frighten Teacher Shen. How were we to know the ghosts would be this powerful? We could never handle this. We were wrong, and now no one can escape." Lou Taichu knelt in repentance, but what was the use of repenting? These ghosts wouldn't take pity on them.
"It's good that you know you were wrong," a familiar voice said, approaching. "How can you want to bully your teacher because some topics were hard to memorize? As young people of the new era, you should welcome difficulties. Legal provisions, laws of social development, speeches should be no obstacle. As long as you are determined, you can definitely memorize them!"
"Teacher Shen!" Seeing Teacher Shen quickly walking towards them, Lou Taichu shouted, "Teacher Shen, run away!"
"Who's running? As a teacher, how can I be the first to run away when my students are in trouble?" Teacher Shen quickly ran into the woods, right into the circle of fierce ghosts. "You ill-intentioned monsters, be sensible and let my students go at once!"
"Ho-ho!" Lin-shidi had been partly possessed by the fierce ghost, and its voice came out of him. "Another one, and the body's pretty good. Who wants it?"
"Teacher Shen, if I sacrifice my heart's blood to the sword, I can gather enough power to break these evil beings' array. You get out and call Chief Disciple Ning. It was my idea that brought so much harm to my shidi, and it should be me cleaning up this mess!" said Lou Taichu resolutely.
"Very good. If you know you were wrong, you can improve. You understand the importance of taking responsibility. You're a good child. I forgive you." Teacher Shen patted Lou Taichu's shoulder. "But you can't throw your life away casually. Don't be afraid. I know Taekwondo, and I'm quite skilled. There's... one, two, three... only nineteen fierce ghosts. They can't beat me."
Then he went right up to Lin-shidi, grabbed the exposed half of the fierce ghost's head, yanked, and pulled the fierce ghost right out.
Lin-shidi fell down feebly. Teacher Shen picked up and threw down the half-crippled ghost several times. The ghost no longer looked imposing. It lay pathetically on the ground, looking like it had been horribly mistreated.
Teacher Shen laced his fingers together. His knuckles cracked noisily. He stepped on the half-crippled ghost's head and said, "You aren't my students, and you aren't my colleagues, either. I won't go easy on you. I'm giving you three seconds to leave my students' bodies, and you may still have a chance to transcend. Otherwise it'll be time's up."
How could the fierce ghosts retreat because of his words? The eighteen remaining possessed bodies surrounded Teacher Shen.
What happened next was something Lou Taichu would never forget. He watched Teacher Shen punch each person, punching the ghosts out of the bodies. He broke off a tree branch, bit through his middle finger, smeared the blood from his finger onto the branch, then began using the branch to flog the ghosts.
The fierce ghosts were flogged until they knelt to beg for mercy. How could they dare to possess anyone? Each of them was crying in an un-ghostlike fashion.
Chief Disciple Ning came along then and coldly said, "I'm giving you a chance to transcend. I'll give you a reincarnation scripture. You can read it yourselves."
The ghosts grabbed eagerly at the scripture, but some of them were illiterate, and Teacher Shen read to them.
The fierce ghosts fell over themselves to recite the scripture and transcend. Within half an hour, all the fierce ghosts had vanished without a trace.
Chief Disciple Ning grabbed Teacher Shen's hand and put the finger he had bitten into his mouth. Only after taking care of the wound for him did he say, "Did you think you were so careful the sect elders couldn't figure it out? The only reason they dared to let you disciples who haven't finished your training yet off the mountain was that Teacher Shen was going with you. And you still tried to bully him, huh?"
Teacher Shen, however, was good-tempered. "Don't be angry, they're only children. They know they were wrong and they can improve. When we get back I'll just have them copy the text of the new conference ten times."
"You're going to spoil your students," said Chief Disciple Ning, glaring at him. "Have you forgotten that I'm also your student?"
Teacher Shen hugged Chief Disciple Ning and kissed his face. "You can't be a student. If you were a student, I'd have to break up with you. How could a teacher date a student?"
The disciples who had already been possessed now got an eyeful of PDA, then went back to the sect to question their respective masters. Only then did they learn the story of Teacher Shen transcending all the fierce ghosts in H City. In the whole sect, the most awesome person wasn't the sect leader or any of the elders, but the unassuming Teacher Shen.
If you asked Teacher Shen, Why are you strong? Teacher Shen would tilt his head, think about it, then hand over a book on Marxism and a copy of the constitution and say that when you had memorized these you would understand.
Lou Taichu spent half his life memorizing and only realized when he was old that ideological and political education was only a means of helping people get on the right path. What really made Teacher Shen strong was...
His righteous heart, fearing neither ghosts nor gods.
Previous Chapter
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
The Maoshan Sect had a political teacher.
There was actually nothing strange about this. Many large private and state-owned enterprises currently attached great importance to political education. In its capacity as a large-scale tourist attraction, there was absolutely nothing remarkable about the employees in the Maoshan Sect's scenic area receiving some ideological and political education.
But for the inner disciples — those who daily studied the Tao Te Ching, the Maoshan Sect's secret writings, the Record of a Hundred Ghosts, the sixty-four trigrams of the I-Ching, the Tui Bei Tu, ancient and modern arrays and all manner of subjects like that — the traditional Daoists, for them to suddenly also have to take a political class, the sort of political class where they had to keep up with the country's current affairs and politics and write reflections on whatever conferences there were... didn't there seem to be something wrong with this picture?
The disciples protested against the political class many times, and even jointly wrote to the assembly of the sect elders, but they were all turned down.
The political teacher, Shen Jianguo, was a serious, earnest, extremely conscientious person. He gave a quiz every three days and a test every five. Some of the disciples took the questions for the national civil service exam and completed them in time. They found that their written examinations could get them high marks. If not for the fact that their academic records were insufficient, they would have been able to have careers as civil servants.
But they were future Daoists! Why should they have to test for civil service?
They were different from ordinary people. They were disciples who had seen with their own eyes that ghosts existed. They were a group of people who struggled in the shadows to guard the world. They were so great — why did they have to study politics?
They really didn't want to remember the significance of some assembly of some committee's plenary session!
Nearly a hundred students gathered together to plan to teach Teacher Shen a lesson. Their politics grades wouldn't impact the completion of their apprenticeships; they weren't afraid of Teacher Shen giving them bad grades.
Some disciples made inquiries. The reason for Teacher Shen's great power within the Maoshan Sect was that he and Ning Tiance, the chief disciple of the Maoshan sect and the designated future sect leader, had a relationship of a delicate nature. The word was that Ning Tiance was a rare talent, not seen at the Maoshan Sect in a thousand years. In order to persuade him to stay, Sect Leader Ning had reluctantly agreed to let him use his power for personal gain and bring Teacher Shen to work at the Maoshan Sect so the two of them could conveniently date.
After their discussion, these good for nothing disciples raised a stink in class.
"This whole class is asking to go on vacation together?" Teacher Shen stared at the note.
"Teacher Shen, we have an important task to do," said Lou Taichu, the head of the class and the leader of the plot. “Some time ago, while developing a natural oxygen bar tourist attraction in G Province, the developers discovered a mass grave dating back to an unknown period. Without performing a rite, the developers dug up the bones and sent them to a crematorium to be burned. Now the tourist site gets daily hauntings, and the developers are so poor they can't afford to buy pants. They specially requested that we Maoshan disciples come at once. Since it was a mass grave, there must be many resentful spirits, so I decided to take all the disciples along. We need to take a month off."
"A month! You'll fall very far behind on your school work." Teacher Shen's face was troubled. "How about you do it during a public holiday?"
"No need, no need," Lou Taichu said immediately. "In fact, we only need a long time to prepare. Teacher Shen can come with us, and even enjoy the natural oxygen bar at the same time."
"Oh... Wait while I consider it."
The outcome of Teacher Shen's considerations was to take Ning Tiance with him. He could avoid missing class and take his boyfriend on vacation; what was there against it? The disciples had expected this; when the time came they could delay Chief Disciple Ning and take Teacher Shen to a seriously haunted location to scare him.
Chief Disciple Ning didn't refuse, so scores of disciples packed themselves into a hard seat carriage, and everyone happily went off to their destination. Only Teacher Shen held his back and complained about the Maoshan Sect's obsession with hard seats. If they had the money to buy out a whole car, why not make it a sleeper? His back hurt.
Chief Disciple Ning massaged his back for him and let him lie in his lap. There were plenty of seats, so the two of them took up a seat meant for three people and fooled around.
When they arrived at their destination, one of the students cornered Chief Disciple Ning while the others took Teacher Shen hiking, promising to write about the experience, in this way finally managing to separate the two of them.
Seeing them going in the direction of the mass grave, Chief Disciple Ning seemed to want to say something, but he was interrupted by the disciple and finally kept quiet.
Everyone had settled things. As soon as they reached the haunted place, they would scatter, leaving Teacher Shen alone. They would wait for the ghosts to scare him to tears, then appear to save him. This way, Teacher Shen would understand that they were future protecters of the human world from evil and wouldn't make them memorize political questions again!
After Lou Taichu and the other disciples scattered, they gathered at a pre-arranged location to keep an ear out for Teacher Shen's screams.
"Lou-shixiong, why is it getting colder and colder? The Yin energy is very strong," a disciple surnamed Lin said, rubbing his arms. "Shixiong, my back feels like there's a weight on it. Who's pressing on me? I can't take it."
All the disciples dimly felt something had gone wrong. They looked over and saw a bloody head on Lin-shidi's back, grinning at them.
It wasn't just Lin-shidi. Half of the disciples had been beset by incomplete figures. Some had no head, some had no hands or feet. The most nauseating were the ghosts with their guts hanging out, all covered in blood.
The disciples knew that the blood was only an illusion. The ones who hadn't been possessed set up an array at once. They hadn't expected the mass grave to date back to before the founding of the People's Republic. These ghosts had died miserably. Their resentment was very powerful, far exceeding the disciples' strength.
"Quick, quick, someone run and ask Chief Disciple Ning to come!" Lou Taichu said hurriedly.
Their phone signals were blocked, and on top of that they ran into a ghost maze. They couldn't get out at all! With these ghosts sticking to them, when dawn came, the humans and ghosts would switch places. They would become crippled ghosts, while these fierce ghosts would use their identities to live on.
"Lou-shixiong, what do we do?" Lin-shidi was the youngest, only fifteen. The ghost's head had sunk halfway into his body. He couldn't move at all and was so scared he started to cry.
Lou Taichu didn't know what to do. He was principally responsible for this. They had deliberately gotten Chief Disciple Ning, who was the most powerful, out of the way, and now that they had run into this predicament, none of them could get out.
And if the disciples with their powers were in this state, then Teacher Shen, who was an ordinary person and had been left alone, had probably already come to grief.
"We just wanted to frighten Teacher Shen. How were we to know the ghosts would be this powerful? We could never handle this. We were wrong, and now no one can escape." Lou Taichu knelt in repentance, but what was the use of repenting? These ghosts wouldn't take pity on them.
"It's good that you know you were wrong," a familiar voice said, approaching. "How can you want to bully your teacher because some topics were hard to memorize? As young people of the new era, you should welcome difficulties. Legal provisions, laws of social development, speeches should be no obstacle. As long as you are determined, you can definitely memorize them!"
"Teacher Shen!" Seeing Teacher Shen quickly walking towards them, Lou Taichu shouted, "Teacher Shen, run away!"
"Who's running? As a teacher, how can I be the first to run away when my students are in trouble?" Teacher Shen quickly ran into the woods, right into the circle of fierce ghosts. "You ill-intentioned monsters, be sensible and let my students go at once!"
"Ho-ho!" Lin-shidi had been partly possessed by the fierce ghost, and its voice came out of him. "Another one, and the body's pretty good. Who wants it?"
"Teacher Shen, if I sacrifice my heart's blood to the sword, I can gather enough power to break these evil beings' array. You get out and call Chief Disciple Ning. It was my idea that brought so much harm to my shidi, and it should be me cleaning up this mess!" said Lou Taichu resolutely.
"Very good. If you know you were wrong, you can improve. You understand the importance of taking responsibility. You're a good child. I forgive you." Teacher Shen patted Lou Taichu's shoulder. "But you can't throw your life away casually. Don't be afraid. I know Taekwondo, and I'm quite skilled. There's... one, two, three... only nineteen fierce ghosts. They can't beat me."
Then he went right up to Lin-shidi, grabbed the exposed half of the fierce ghost's head, yanked, and pulled the fierce ghost right out.
Lin-shidi fell down feebly. Teacher Shen picked up and threw down the half-crippled ghost several times. The ghost no longer looked imposing. It lay pathetically on the ground, looking like it had been horribly mistreated.
Teacher Shen laced his fingers together. His knuckles cracked noisily. He stepped on the half-crippled ghost's head and said, "You aren't my students, and you aren't my colleagues, either. I won't go easy on you. I'm giving you three seconds to leave my students' bodies, and you may still have a chance to transcend. Otherwise it'll be time's up."
How could the fierce ghosts retreat because of his words? The eighteen remaining possessed bodies surrounded Teacher Shen.
What happened next was something Lou Taichu would never forget. He watched Teacher Shen punch each person, punching the ghosts out of the bodies. He broke off a tree branch, bit through his middle finger, smeared the blood from his finger onto the branch, then began using the branch to flog the ghosts.
The fierce ghosts were flogged until they knelt to beg for mercy. How could they dare to possess anyone? Each of them was crying in an un-ghostlike fashion.
Chief Disciple Ning came along then and coldly said, "I'm giving you a chance to transcend. I'll give you a reincarnation scripture. You can read it yourselves."
The ghosts grabbed eagerly at the scripture, but some of them were illiterate, and Teacher Shen read to them.
The fierce ghosts fell over themselves to recite the scripture and transcend. Within half an hour, all the fierce ghosts had vanished without a trace.
Chief Disciple Ning grabbed Teacher Shen's hand and put the finger he had bitten into his mouth. Only after taking care of the wound for him did he say, "Did you think you were so careful the sect elders couldn't figure it out? The only reason they dared to let you disciples who haven't finished your training yet off the mountain was that Teacher Shen was going with you. And you still tried to bully him, huh?"
Teacher Shen, however, was good-tempered. "Don't be angry, they're only children. They know they were wrong and they can improve. When we get back I'll just have them copy the text of the new conference ten times."
"You're going to spoil your students," said Chief Disciple Ning, glaring at him. "Have you forgotten that I'm also your student?"
Teacher Shen hugged Chief Disciple Ning and kissed his face. "You can't be a student. If you were a student, I'd have to break up with you. How could a teacher date a student?"
The disciples who had already been possessed now got an eyeful of PDA, then went back to the sect to question their respective masters. Only then did they learn the story of Teacher Shen transcending all the fierce ghosts in H City. In the whole sect, the most awesome person wasn't the sect leader or any of the elders, but the unassuming Teacher Shen.
If you asked Teacher Shen, Why are you strong? Teacher Shen would tilt his head, think about it, then hand over a book on Marxism and a copy of the constitution and say that when you had memorized these you would understand.
Lou Taichu spent half his life memorizing and only realized when he was old that ideological and political education was only a means of helping people get on the right path. What really made Teacher Shen strong was...
His righteous heart, fearing neither ghosts nor gods.
Previous Chapter
Table of Contents
Re: Can i translate this?
Date: 2020-05-11 03:27 pm (UTC)