Meng Liu followed Brother Zhuang around the woods, becoming more and more difficult, it was almost dark and still did not reach the top of the mountain, and even Meng Liu felt that they had not climbed the mountain at all, Meng Liu wiped the sweat on his head and asked: "Brother Zhuang, we have been walking for most of the day, how long will it take to arrive?" ”

"Tired?" Brother Zhuang turned his head and sneered, "We'll rest when we're tired, but we may not be able to go to the mountains today, and any jackals, tigers and leopards will come out at night, are you afraid?" ”

"Not tired! I just want to ask, are we walking up the mountain? Looking so high and steep at the bottom of the mountain, why does it feel like walking on the ground after entering? Meng Liu took advantage of the gap between words to shake his thighs.

"This mountain was not like this before, I heard that it was a formation, it was laid by the old fairy on the mountain hundreds of years ago, I heard the village chief say that when the Ming Dynasty was about to fall hundreds of years ago, the old fairy came to this mountain alone, and over time it became what it is now.

The old fairy gave the method of entering and exiting this mountain to the village chief, that is, my father, and my father passed it on to me. Otherwise, Lord Lu wouldn't have found me to lead the way. Brother Zhuang laughed.

"What happened to Lord Lu back then?" Meng Liu remembered that Lu Ji had told him before.

"Lord Lu was lucky back then, it happened that the old immortal asked his disciple to go down the mountain at that time, otherwise Lord Lu would really have to stay on the mountain." Brother Zhuang replied,

"Okay, I've rested for a while, let's go, otherwise I really won't be able to catch up to the top of the mountain before dark, by the way, your pace is solid and powerless, follow my pace, it can make you a lot easier, you are also the first person who can follow me to the present, I will teach you this pace, don't tell others."

"What about the first ones?" Meng Liu asked.

"The first few? The first few were all up in the morning, and the time of the day was up, and you didn't start going up until after noon. Brother Zhuang said angrily.

"Alright, let's hurry." Meng Liu said.

At this moment in a thatched hut on the mountain.

"Somebody has gone up the mountain, Master." The young man knelt on the mat and looked at the old man with a childish face in front of him, as early as a hundred years ago, there was a poem praising it: "Self-talk is neither god nor immortal; The crane hair is childish, and the face is incomparable. ”

The old man smiled: "This is the sixth, have you thought about it?" Go down the mountain or continue to wait for the master? ”

"It is said that it is six, but in fact, not all of them are one, the master once calculated, although that person has the breath of a true dragon, but he only has the time of heaven, and he is not yet in a favorable location and no one is harmonious, so it seems that if he is not the master, he can only become a hero at most." The boy shook his head, still not ready to go down the mountain to help Lu Ji.

"I'm talking about the young man who is climbing the mountain now, this person's origin is unknown, although there is no true dragon energy, but there is a faint aura condensed above his head, this person's surname is Meng Liu, it's amazing, the Meng family is the surname of Yasheng, and the name Liu is also a big name in the world!" The old man said, "Is that not tempting at all? ”

"Master, why do I feel like you're driving me down the mountain?" The young man said helplessly, "Moreover, if he is really related to the Meng family, I can't follow him, what I have learned in my life is very different from Confucianism." ”

"Confucianism governs people, Legalism governs the world, there is no conflict, besides, when your senior brother went down the mountain fifty years ago, he also went down the mountain with a copy of Confucian classics, and someone sent you up the mountain twenty years ago, I knew that your senior brother had passed away."

"Senior brother is senior brother, I am me, Confucian ruler? Big fallacy! According to what the master said, the world is about to be in chaos, and Confucianism governs people, who will govern it? At that time, the people will know to carry the hoe at home to protect themselves! The young man said angrily, he derogated Confucianism the most, thought that Confucianism was a ridiculous doctrine, and had always scoffed at Confucian classics, if it wasn't for the master's refusal, he would definitely burn all the Confucian books on the mountain!

"What is Confucianism to you?" The old man is not angry, if he is angry for such a trivial matter for hundreds of years, he has lived in vain for so long.

"Self-denial and prudence, kindness and sincerity." The young man knows enough about Confucianism to see it this way, "More than 2,000 years ago, the Holy Master founded Confucianism, and the benevolence he pursued seemed to me to be just two words. The boy held up two fingers.

"Looking at the rules themselves, Confucianism talks about rules, Legalism talks about rules, and Taoism also talks about rules, but there are differences in nature. For example, the order of morality, righteousness, and etiquette, in my opinion, the morality on the avenue, the righteousness, the righteousness, and the end of the ceremony, which is what each family pursued more than 2,000 years ago, why did the Taoists pursue the birth of the year, because at that time, with the collapse of the foundation of the etiquette system, even the etiquette may not be able to do it, let alone the moral righteousness of the moral rules on the ceremony? Taoists have said that "after the loss of morality, after virtue, after the loss of virtue, after the loss of benevolence, after the loss of righteousness, after the loss of righteousness, after the courtesy, the husband is faithful and the first of chaos." ”

This sentence does not mean that there is prejudice against the rites, but stands on a higher level to look at the rites, he sees the defects of the rites, in the Taoist classics, the order of the world's Tao flow is: the first Tao, the Tao lost to virtue, virtue lost to benevolence, benevolence lost to righteousness, righteousness lost to etiquette. That is to say, when a world advocates etiquette and takes etiquette as the highest criterion, morality and righteousness have been lost, because etiquette is too easy to fake, too easy to be used by selfish and unscrupulous people, and loyalty is weak, chaos and prosperity are naturally unavoidable, corresponding to history, the ancient is the Tao, and it has fallen to the era of etiquette two thousand years ago. Zhang Taibai paused and continued.

In the era of the Holy Master, even the rites no longer existed, so the Taoists chose to be born, and the Holy Master saw the rites collapse and happiness, and he wanted to change, so he resolutely chose to enter the WTO, and used his own way to change the era of the collapse of the rites, but he was also pragmatic, the essence of his thought was self-denial and revenge, and he did not pursue a higher level of moral righteousness.

In the Confucian classics of later generations, it is said that the life of the Holy Master is "to be determined by the Tao, according to virtue, and according to benevolence." ”。 In other words, the virtues spoken of by the Holy Prophets are virtues with the pursuit of the Tao as the background; The benevolence we speak of is the benevolence based on virtue. ”

"Therefore, the Holy Ancestor was bound to fail that year, the Holy Ancestor did not change the general trend of history, and the society began to change to a lower level of the Fa, why the Zhao family was able to establish the Zhao Dynasty from a small country in a corner, relying on changing the law, only by changing the law can it become stronger! That was true then, and even more so now. ”

"The country is impermanently strong, and impermanently weak. If those who follow the law are strong, the country will be strong, and if those who follow the law are weak, the country will be weak. These words all show a simple truth, in the current era, morality, righteousness, etiquette, the rules and constraints formed by these four words can no longer conform to the development, so we can only use the law to restrain the world. ”

"The succession of a dynasty is to abide by the rules, the fall of a dynasty from the essence of its demise, in addition to the mediocrity of the last emperor, is more of a break of the rules made by the first emperor, but there is no ability to create a new rule, re-restrain the society, so the fall of the dynasty is not unexpected. This was the case with the Ming Dynasty back then, and the system established by Emperor Taizu had long since ceased to exist, so the Ming Dynasty would die! ”

The young man took a deep breath, and the old man looked at the young man in front of him for the first time and felt that the young man had grown up, and smiled with relief: "You, have grown up." ”

"Master, the disciple doesn't want to go down the mountain yet."

"For hundreds of years, your brothers and sisters have learned different things, whether they are learning vertical and horizontal arts, or Confucianism, or Fa. And each one, like you, is dismissive of other doctrines, but knows nothing about them. ”

The old man touched his long beard and smiled indifferently, "In this case, you should go down the mountain even more, and let the world know that the study of Legalism is the orthodoxy of the world, if there is about to be chaos today, the time is in you, the location is in the north, and the people should be in the young man at the bottom of the mountain." ”

"Master, when the student goes down the mountain this time, he will let the world know the name of the Legalist." The boy prostrated three times.

"Okay, let's go, in another hundred years, your junior brother should be born, I will go down the mountain at that time to see if everyone in the world knows the Fa." The old man said.

"Good!" The boy replied.