Chapter 7: Learning the Way

  Since that night's incident, Dad and Mom also had to believe that there are really ghosts in this world. At the same time, our home also had two and a half more guests.

  One is Lao Dao, who has now officially become my master and has moved into our home with great fanfare. The other is the female ghost Ling Long. Ever since I saved her from Master's sword, she has been lingering around and refusing to leave. Whenever Master and the family members try to drive her away, she would appear in front of me with tears in her eyes, speechless but pitiful. And then, of course, it's up to me to placate Master and the family again. The remaining half is none other than Ho Jingying, the snot-nosed girl. Nowadays, this little girl has been relying on my family for everything except sleeping at our place. As Mother would say, it's as if we've given birth to another daughter. And what's more, she still has a favor to repay me.

  Time really flies. In the blink of an eye, it's already time for the final exams. The female ghost Linglong got her master's tacit consent and hid in my jade pendant. (After I became a disciple, my master returned that jade pendant to me!) Under the guise of supervising my studies, what she actually did most was humming those operas in my ear when Master wasn't around.

  So, during the day I have to listen to my teachers' nagging at school. At night after finishing my homework, I have to learn from my master and listen to his nagging! In the second half of the night when everyone is asleep, I still have to force myself to continue listening to the female ghost's nagging.

  "Next, the results of the final exam. Everyone sit down, when I read out whose name, who will come up." The class teacher held a stack of result sheets in her arms and walked into the classroom with several "Three Good Students" awards. Looking at those result sheets, I had a faint sense of foreboding in my heart.

  "Jin Xuejun, Chinese 98, math 96! Huo Jingying, Chinese 100, math 99! ...... The class teacher handed out the transcript one by one, and until the end, my name was not mentioned. This made me feel even more ominous. I'm a kid with self-awareness, I won't think that I scored double hundreds, and the teacher deliberately left the transcript to the last to praise me. The only possibility is that both my Chinese and math are not qualified. Leaving me to the end is not praise, but criticism."

  My premonition was accurate, the head teacher waved the last transcript in his hand, tapped the podium a few times with his pointer, and announced to the whole class with a cold smile: "Classmates, everyone's grades have made different progress this semester. As a teacher, I feel very pleased. But there is one student who has set several records for our class." When he said this, the whole class fell silent. The simple-minded students thought someone had won the school's award and eagerly raised their ears to listen to the head teacher's next words.

  "Classmate Lou Mengmeng, it's not easy to achieve this. You must have been very careless to get such scores? Tsk tsk tsk, 59 in Chinese and 27 in math! A record has been set, not only did you fail both subjects at the same time, but the total score of both subjects is also less than 100. Moreover, your scores for both subjects are even lower than many classmates' single subject score." As expected, I didn't pass. Looking at our class teacher's furious and exasperated expression, I couldn't help but feel a chill run down my spine.

  "Take the report card back and get your parents to sign it. Next semester, have them bring you here to register." The old teacher, somewhat disappointed, crumpled up the report card into a ball and slammed it into my face, shouting.

  "Oh, son is back from school? Has the report card been issued? How was the exam? Hurry up and let mom take a look!" Just as I walked into the house with a worried face, not thinking of how to deal with it yet. My mother, who was picking vegetables in the kitchen, came out with a smile and stretched out her hand to ask for the report card.

  "Auntie, Mengmeng didn't do well in this semester's exams!" The snotty girl following behind me saw the situation and promptly sold me out. I was still thinking of finding an excuse to delay telling her for a few more days, but with what she said, there was no way to delay it anymore.

  "Didn't you pass? Was it Chinese or math?" Mom's face changed, and she asked again.

  "None of them passed......" Niutian Yu acted as my spokesperson, and at this moment, I had the heart to kill this talkative woman.

  "Smack!" My mom, who had always been opposed to corporal punishment, finally lost her temper. She grabbed me by the waist and flipped me over, giving my butt a good dozen hard smacks.

  "It's not all his fault if he didn't do well on the exam. Normally, he studies during the day and listens to me recite scriptures at night, but in the second half of the night, he still has to listen to Linglong's nonsense. It's already quite an achievement that he can score this high!" At a critical moment, my master stood up for me and spoke on my behalf. But how did he know about what happened between me and Linglong in the second half of the night? This old man is really mysterious!

  "Stop speaking for him, look at Jingying, isn't she also learning the way? How come her results are so good!" After exposing a hand that night, Old Mother knew she was also "a fellow practitioner".

  "What schools can teach are only common people. Among the multitude of living beings, those who can become disciples of a poor Taoist like me are very few in number. Scores can represent nothing, they are just a standard to measure how stupid someone is. The higher the score, the more severe the stupidity." Unexpectedly, this time my master stood firmly on my side.

  "But if he doesn't read books, what will he do in the future?" Mom wiped away tears and sat down on a small stool, muttering to herself. In her opinion, all other pursuits are inferior, only reading is superior. As she would say, she has suffered enough from being uncultured.

  "You can do anything, even follow me to wander around the world! In short, everyone has their own path to take. My master said with a profound tone. But somehow, I feel like he's setting up a plot for something."

  "What? You're saying that next semester you won't be studying, and instead will be traveling with him? Old Bull Nose, I'm telling you, don't even think about it!" As expected, during dinner, Master revealed his true intentions. He told my parents to let me drop out of school and travel the world with him, making connections and building relationships. This proposal was met with unanimous opposition from my parents. Unexpectedly, however, Huo Jingying didn't echo their sentiments as she usually did.

  "Let him read, this road is not going to work. Why are you so obsessed with reading? What's the point of reading? In your words, it's just to get a decent job. Whether the job is decent or not doesn't matter. What matters is how much income it can bring him. This, I'm afraid, is what you're really concerned about!" The old man sipped his wine and tapped the table gently.

  "By following you on your travels, can we earn a living?" The old man looked at the old Taoist's somewhat tattered robes with disdain.

  "Hmph, I'm not bragging. If I want to, it's just a matter of minutes to make tens of thousands come and go." The master said with some arrogance.

  "Don't believe me?" The master saw that the old man was somewhat skeptical of his words, so he turned around and opened the rattan box he had been carrying with him. He took out over a dozen jade pendants and other trinkets of varying sizes from inside and placed them on the table.

  "Are you a smuggler of cultural relics or an escaped Taoist?" Dad looked at the ancient jade carvings on the table and stuttered to ask Master. The shapes of these jades, although not as good as the one hanging around my neck, would be worth no less than 10,000 yuan each if sold in the market. Master suddenly took out over ten pieces, which represented over a million yuan! In those days, 400 yuan was enough to get married. Any piece of jade on the table could be sold for enough money for me to marry and divorce tens or even hundreds of times. Master's move instantly stunned both my parents.

  "Who says Taoists can't make money? My attire is just a matter of being natural." The master put away the jade objects on the table one by one, picked up his chopsticks and ate a few mouthfuls of food while saying this.

  "But Mengmeng doesn't study, in the future she won't be able to recognize a few big characters, and will eventually become a laughing stock!" Mom was clearly moved. As Master said, studying is for a decent job, a decent job is for a better income. What's income? It's money! Seeing Master casually put out things worth over 100,000 yuan, it can't be denied that Dad and Mom are not as opposed to my dropping out of school as before!

  "Now that it's decided, from tomorrow on, you little scamp will follow me and focus on learning the Tao. As for reading and recognizing characters, classics are also books, and naturally there are words in them." The master saw that the old man and woman were moved, and immediately took advantage of the situation to settle things.

  Thus, every morning, the neighbors on either side would vaguely hear a voice reciting scriptures coming from my house. The recitation was: "The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao; the name that can be named is not the eternal name. The Nameless is the origin of heaven and earth. The Named is the mother of all things..."

  And so, everyone secretly spread the word that the young master next door was preparing to become a monk.

  Then, the idle women from the neighborhood would come to my house every now and then to express their sympathy for my mother, squeezing out a few tears to say: "Mrs. Lou, accept it, it's all fate!" In fact, behind their backs, which of these women wasn't secretly rejoicing? One's own happiness is often built on others' suffering!

  And my master would often see those fat and slovenly old women coming to the door, mostly with a cold smile and disdain. In his words: "These women, they will be like this for the rest of their lives!"

  After two months of summer vacation, I finally memorized the "Tao Te Ching" that my master had given me and understood its meaning. Moreover, my master also taught me a small technique, which was the incantation he used to subdue Linglong, called the "Killing Ghosts and Taming Demons Incantation". This incantation increases in power as one's cultivation progresses, but has one drawback: before each use, one must recite the entire incantation. Otherwise, not only will it have no effect, but it will also backfire on oneself.

  "Eat grapes without spitting out grape skins, not eating grapes yet spitting out grape skins!" In order to train my tongue, Master started me practicing those tongue twisters. So, every morning, from my house would come the sounds of me struggling with the tongue twisters. And then, all the old ladies thought I was crazy. And then again, they didn't even bother to fake cry anymore.

  "People, still have to cultivate virtue and accumulate good fortune. Giving birth to a son and cooking red eggs and setting off firecrackers is lively, but what's the use? Who knows if he's now afflicted with a mental illness? He's been half-mad and half-demented all day, how did this happen?" The women's discussions, intentionally or unintentionally, reached the old mother's ears.

  More often, these women would wait for the old mother to buy vegetables and return home, and then they would deliberately whisper to each other, provoking the old mother. For these old women, the old mother had secretly wiped away countless tears. Although she knew her son didn't have epilepsy, rumors were terrifying. Gradually, the old mother became haggard!