"Put me down. I've almost recovered. Just sit here and rest for a while, and I'll be ready to leave." Seeing my confusion, Master didn't rush to answer my question, but asked me to let him down.
Listening to his words, I also knew that he had slowly begun to recover. As long as he got through the initial discomfort of the soul shock, he would recover very quickly.
I put Master down as I was told, and Master sat on the bluestone and began to rest. It seemed that he didn't want to answer my questions. I heard the sound of killing coming from the town below, and I felt anxious, wondering what happened to Master. Calm down
Finally, I asked Master: "Master, why don't you ask me to count the steps in a hurry?"
Master looked at my question, glanced at me, then took my arm and stood up, gesturing for me to follow him forward, and said: "Chengyi, I hope that the more impatient you are, the calmer you will be. At least you have to learn not to let others see that you are impatient."
"Yes." I took a deep breath and nodded, knowing in my heart that Master would not harm me.
"Because the responsibilities you will have to shoulder in the future are not light, you should learn to be a little more "mind-minded". You have grown up with me since you were a child. I regret that I didn't let you beat you less. After all, the character I shaped when I was a child is Compared with this complicated world, it is too simple. Simplicity is not bad, it is easy for Taoist disciples to be praised for simplicity. But God is not as good as man, who knows what he will be burdened with in this life?" Master looked a little bit. Nagging, he rarely nagged like this in the past, but after getting together again this time, I found that he seemed to be nagging more often.
As he spoke, he stopped and pulled me to a stop.
I looked at the master, thinking he had something to express, but this time he said to me: "Chengyi, this bluestone road is the only way to the village where Qiangzi practices."
"Ah, isn't that the Hidden World Village?" I meant to build a road specifically, isn't it too obvious
"Haha, how can the real situation be so simple? Do you know the name of this staircase?" Master asked me back, but he also knew that I would definitely not be able to answer, so Master said directly: "It's still there. It has another name, called the soul-breaking ladder. After a hundred steps, if you still want to walk up this ladder in the normal way, you will definitely not be able to climb it. Losing your life accidentally is a trivial matter. The worst result will be that your soul will be shattered."
"Ah?" I looked at this ordinary bluestone staircase. Apart from the fact that it looked a bit vicissitudes of life due to years of hardening, I couldn't see anything surprising at all.
"Let's not talk about it for now. Now you follow my command. Next step, directly step up the two stairs and stick to the right side." The master said seriously.
When he told me the nickname of this ladder before, he really scared me. I dared not neglect it, so I moved to the rightmost side of the ladder honestly, then straddled the two ladders in one step, and stepped up.
Everything was quiet and nothing happened, but my heart became inexplicably tight and I couldn't help but wonder, what would be the consequences if I didn't follow the steps Master said? But at the same time, the effect of the secret technique began to gradually fade, and my body couldn't help but feel weak.
The master climbed up the stairs in the same way. It was almost time for him to discover my secret technique. He then directed to himself: "Next step, go directly to the first step of the stairs and step on the middle of the stairs."
And the 'sequelae' of the secret technique come very quickly. Once it starts, it is like a flood that bursts the dam, and there is no time to stop it. I could still bear it at the beginning, but when the master's words just fell, I couldn't bear it any longer, and I suddenly leaned on Master's body. The pain began to appear on my body, like the pain of countless ants burrowing around in my muscles. I immediately couldn't move, and I couldn't even see. His hearing also became blurry.
"Chengyi?" Master noticed something was wrong with me, but immediately understood what was going on? This time, Master carried me on his back without hesitation and whispered to me: "Chengyi, bear with me a little."
In fact, besides enduring it, what else can I do? My face was pale, because my body felt so uncomfortable, and all the muscles in my body were spasming. I could only grit my teeth and try my best to prevent myself from completely losing control of my body and slipping off Master's back. Or put all the weight on the Master.
Ordinary people can feel this kind of thing. If you are carrying a conscious person, or because the stress points are different, you will not even feel the weight. If you are carrying an unconscious person, you will find that the weight is the same. Man, he would be many times heavier.
I just tried to lighten Master's burden a little bit, but this time because the secret caves were opened a lot, and Master Chen was not around this time, my consciousness soon became blurred, leaving only a clear feeling of pain. , don’t know anything anymore.
Time always passes very slowly in pain, and this kind of pain from body and soul can only be borne by myself, and cannot be shared by anyone... In this kind of suffering, I don't know how long time has passed. .
When the pain subsided and I regained my consciousness, I felt like I was being thrown on Master's back. The bright sun in the sky shone into my eyes, making me unable to open them.
But I can clearly tell that it is afternoon. I feel like my whole body is covered with sweat. Almost all the clothes on my body are soaked and stuck to my body, steaming... But Master is still climbing this section. Soul Ladder, judging from the body he came into contact with, he was also covered in sticky sweat, and his steps were a little heavy.
This situation made me want to get off Master's back and walk on my own... But just like the exhaustion I felt every time after using the secret technique and the sequelae, after feeling and resisting the pain with such a clear consciousness, I felt the pain from my soul. I was exhausted to the extreme, and I fell into a coma within two minutes of being awake...
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When I woke up again, it was night.
The night breeze in the mountains blew away the heat of the day, making me feel much more comfortable. Apart from being a little tired all over, my condition has basically fully recovered.
The dancing firelight told me that it was time to camp at night. Have we climbed the terrifying-sounding soul-breaking ladder
I woke up, and Master was the first to notice. He didn't say much, he just silently handed over a glass of warm water with just the right temperature. My mouth was already dry, so I took it and drank the water in the glass in one breath. After falling to the ground, Master took it again and poured me another cup from the mountaineering water bottle.
After drinking the water, Master handed me another bowl of cooked food. It was nothing more than paste with dried meat or the like inside. I always found it very unpalatable, but after a day of exhaustion and hard work, I actually felt like eating it. Extraordinarily delicious.
All of this was done in silence, with a strange tacit understanding and naturalness, as normal as breathing... Relying on each other, living and dying together, and trusting each other for a long time, any two people It will all become like this.
Whether their relationship is between brothers, friends, family or husband and wife, it is not easy to cultivate this kind of relationship.
While I was eating, I was thinking about a question: Am I destined to never repay the friendship I owe Master in this life? Or is it that in which life did he owe me? Today I just carried him on my back up the bloody road, and on the way up the mountain he immediately carried me up the Soul-Destroying Staircase. Was this fate destined to be like this
If you owe me, then you owe me. In fact, what people are most afraid of is not the love I owe to someone. If you are still thinking about the love I owe to someone, it must be because you are not close enough to and recognize the person in your heart... the most important thing to yourself. What people are most afraid of when they are close is that they don't owe each other anything. Once that is resolved, what's the point of entanglement? It looked like you were paying and leaving!
And because I owe Master, does that mean that I will meet him again in the next life? This feeling makes me feel more at ease.
After I finished this simple meal, my hungry stomach felt much better... At this time, all the problems during the day came to mind one by one.
"Master, have we finished climbing the soul-breaking ladder?" I asked.
"See for yourself." Master pointed casually. Only then did I notice that the place where Master and I camped was on a small piece of flat grass. It was like a platform in the mountains deliberately built by someone, except that it looked natural. A lot.
And isn't the direction that Master's hand is pointing towards the Soul-Breaking Ladder? It's just that we have reached the end here. What's special is that at the end, there is a wooden stand. A strange-shaped drum is fixed between the stands, and the drumsticks are hung on the wooden stand.
"If you don't know how to walk the soul-breaking ladder, if you force yourself to walk it, your soul will naturally die. But for those who know how to walk, it will be no different from an ordinary ladder." The master said.