"Since the donor is familiar with the story of the Mother Country of the Western Queen, then the poor Dao will not be here to offer ugliness......" The Han Taoist priest saw that Lai Zi came easily, and seemed to know better than himself, and immediately shook his head and said self-deprecatingly.

Hearing what the Han Taoist priest said, Zhang Meng immediately turned his head and looked at Lai Zi.

Lai Zi smiled and said with relief: "It seems that I also know why there was a statue of the Queen Mother of the West here in the pre-Qin period." ”

"Why?" Zhang Meng asked.

"Not all offerings are based on myths and legends. Some people who are known for their prestige and virtue will also be worshiped by the people, such as Yue Fei, a famous general in the Southern Song Dynasty, when he was still alive, some people built a shrine for him, and incense was made every day. Raiko explained.

"Are you saying that at that time, the locals did not worship the Queen Mother, but the Queen of the Western Queen Mother Country?" Zhang Meng touched his chin and suddenly realized.

Seeing that Zhang Meng understood, Lai Zi also nodded and continued: "According to legend, the first queen of the Western Queen Mother Kingdom is called the Queen Mother, and the successors who follow are called the Queen Mother. Therefore, in the history books, from the Xia Dynasty to the Shang Dynasty, the title of the Queen Mother of the West will continue to appear. In the eyes of the ancient Qiangrong people, the Queen Mother of the West should be regarded as an ancestor, just as we Han people think that Nuwa Niangniang created a human race. ”

"I get it." Zhang Meng smiled, looked back at the Han Taoist priest and asked, "However, what happened to the queen mother who was enshrined later?" Does this Queen Mother have anything to do with the Queen Mother of the West? ”

"There are those who say yes, and there are those who say no." The Han Taoist priest didn't point it out, but just said it in a pun.

Lai Zi knew that the Han Taoist priest in front of him was more or less enlightened than those Kazakh Taoist priests, and if he wasn't Han, maybe he wouldn't have said so much just now. But after all, he was born in Taoism, and it was not good to point fingers at the Taoist immortals, so Lai Zi immediately helped the Han Taoist priest take over the conversation: "Ah Meng, I think the relationship between the two should be inheritance!" The Queen Mother of the West is a real character in history, while the Queen Mother is a fictional god in mythology. If you have to talk about relationships, then the Queen Mother is likely to be something that is further deified based on the Queen Mother of the West. ”

"Laizi, you can tell me more specifically." Zhang Meng listened curiously and hurriedly asked.

"Okay." Hearing Zhang Meng say this, Lai Zi looked back at the Han Taoist priest and saw that he was not displeased, so he continued: "Although there are many records in the historical materials of the Queen Mother of the West, the earliest mythological record comes from the "Classic of Mountains and Seas", in the "Classic of Mountains and Seas", the Queen Mother of the West is called the Queen Mother of the West because she lives west of Kunlun Mountain. ”

"West of Kunlun, is it West Kunlun?" Zhang Meng thought of what Lai Zi had said before, and immediately said: "Brother Lai Zi, I remember you said that West Kunlun is the place where scattered cultivators gather in "Romance of the Gods". ”

"Yes." Lai Zi nodded, and then denied: "But the west of Kunlun is not West Kunlun. ”

"Huh?" Zhang Meng frowned.

"Hear me out first." Lai Zi didn't want Zhang Meng to divert the conversation, and continued: "The "Classic of Mountains and Seas" once described the image of the Queen Mother of the West: the so-called Queen Mother of the West, her appearance is like a person, with a leopard's tail and tiger teeth and a good roar, and a hoopoe with fluffy hair. Roughly speaking, the Queen Mother of the West looks like a human, but has a leopard's tail and tiger teeth, roars and whistles with a voice like a wild beast, and her hair is scattered, and she is a god sent by the heavens to rule over plague, disease, death, and punishment, and resides in the Kunlun Mountains. ”

"This ...... This image is a bit too intimidating, isn't it? Zhang Meng smiled bitterly.

"Nope." Laizi reminded: "Do you remember the kiss? It has been recorded in the "Classic of Mountains and Seas". ”

"Ugh." Hearing this, Zhang Meng was stunned.

What Lai Zi said is true, if it weren't for tomb robbing, he wouldn't believe that those ancient creatures were real, but now, Zhang Meng didn't dare to question it.

"Because of historical evolution, after the Western Zhou Dynasty, a large number of Rongdi ethnic groups were integrated into the Han nationality, and the Western Queen Mother began to be accepted by the Han ethnic group. In the Han Dynasty, Taoism arose, and gradually turned the Western Queen Mother into a Taoist god, and even later, the Taoist Ge Hong in the last years of the Eastern Wu Dynasty called the Queen Mother of the West and the Eastern Princes the sons and daughters of the Yuan Shi Tianzun in the Book of Pillows......"

"This is officially the ancestor of our Han people!" Zhang Meng smiled and continued to ask: "The queen mother of the future generations should also be mythologized at this time, right?" ”

"Yes, Ge Hong said that after the success of the creation of the Yuan Shi Tianzun, he met the Holy Maiden Taiyuan, and the two combined and gave birth to the Queen Mother of the West and the Prince of the East. And the head of all the male immortals is the prince of the East who is condensed by the congenital yang energy, who lives in Donghua and holds Penglai. Lai Zi said: "Both of them have the elixir of immortality, so East Penglai and West Kunlun are known in the world." ”

"The Princes of the East?" Zhang Meng was a little confused, and asked puzzledly: "The Queen Mother is deified by the prototype of the Queen Mother of the West, so is the Jade Emperor deified by the Eastern Prince?" ”

"It's not." This time it was the Han Taoist priest who responded to Zhang Meng: "The Jade Emperor is the great sage of heaven and earth transformed by the ancestral qi of the Three Qing Dynasty, and the prince of the East is the chief of the immortal class who is in charge of the male immortals. ”

"Uh......" Zhang Meng looked at Laizi puzzled.

Lai Zi smiled and said: "In later TV dramas, the Queen Mother was often filmed as the wife of the Jade Emperor, but in the Taoist inheritance, the relationship between husband and wife should be the West Queen Mother and the East Prince. ”

"Brother and sister?" Zhang Meng opened his mouth, but when he glanced at the Taoist priest next to him, he didn't dare to say the word incest.

"In ancient mythology, it was normal for brothers and sisters to get married, such as Fuxi and Nuwa. After all, civilization was still relatively backward at that time......" Lai Zi explained briefly, and then continued: "And the title of Queen Mother Niangniang first came out of the novel "Journey to the West". ”

"So, what I saw on TV before were fake?" Zhang Meng said with relief: "If it weren't for Brother Lai Zi saying this, I might have been kept in the dark for the rest of my life!" Unexpectedly, the origin of the Queen Mother of the West turned out to be the daughter of Yuan Shi Tianzun. ”

"yes!" Hearing Zhang Meng say this, Lai Zi was also a little melancholy, sighed and said: "Taoism has fallen to this point, even if it has been deeply involved in the lives of every Chinese for thousands of years, there is still no standardized system. ”

The Han Taoist priest didn't seem to expect Lai Zi to say this, and suddenly had the illusion of finding a bosom friend, and wanted to say something more, but found that a large group of Kazakh Taoist priests not far away ran back to the house and closed the door tightly, and several of them shouted something at the Han Taoist priest in the Kazakh language.

Hearing the words of the group of Kazakh Taoist priests, the Han Taoist priest's face suddenly turned blue, and he didn't say a word, but after taking the four of them to a room, he walked back quickly.

Seeing this scene, Zhang Meng and the others' hearts suddenly sank, it seems that this Taoist temple is really hiding something strange.

However, the Han Taoist priest just opened the door, and not long after he walked out, he turned around and walked back, and instructed Zhang Meng with a worried face: "After nightfall, don't do it!" Don't go out of the room, keep the door closed, and don't open the door no matter what happens! ”