When the white-robed man proposed kneeling there indefinitely, the crowd rallied behind him in enthusiastic support.
So there they knelt, right before the gate.
Li Banfeng was not afraid of wicked people, but he made it a point to steer clear of contemptible ones. Petty, obsequious wretches were far more revolting than the outright wicked, and vastly more troublesome to shake off.
Yet the pressing question at hand was: which way should he go?
Heading north was definitely out of the question—if he took that route, he might well end up walking in another circle right back here.
Since he could identify true north, he could deduce the other cardinal directions as well. Li Banfeng chose to head east.
To the east lay several low hills, unlike the barren wilderness to the north. Keeping his eyes on the hills as landmarks, he was unlikely to lose his bearings.
As he made his way down the mountain, Li Banfeng couldn't help wondering what these sages and worthies ate. After wandering the mountain for half a day, he hadn't seen a single patch of farmland or a single farmer.
Halfway down the slope, Li Banfeng spotted an elderly man in his seventies carting a load of white rice up the mountain. Two others followed behind, helping to push the cart: his son, in his early thirties, and his ten-year-old grandson.
The load of polished rice was heavy, and the three generations strained under the effort. Reaching the middle of the slope, the old man halted the cart. Washing it down with plain water from a jug, grandfather, father, and son gnawed on coarse multigrain flatbreads.
One look told him these three were simple, honest folk. Li Banfeng stepped forward to ask for directions. "Excuse me, could you tell me the way to the nearest train station?"
The old man's son looked up. "Looking for a station? That's terribly far from here."
The old man smiled. "You're a student who came up the mountain to seek learning, aren't you? Failed to see the Sage again today? Young man, don't be impatient. When your sincerity is sufficient, the Sage will surely grant you an audience."
Li Banfeng shook his head. "I'm not here seeking learning. I'm just passing through."
At those words, the son's expression soured with disdain, and he clearly lost all interest in speaking to Li Banfeng.
The old man, assuming there was an unspoken grievance, offered a word of counsel. "Pursuing learning is no easy feat. The Sage expounds the supreme teachings of this world; how could he impart them lightly? Our family has delivered rice to the Sage for sixteen full years. We originally hoped he might take in my son. Now that my son has grown older, the Sage will no longer accept him, so we can only hope my grandson has such good fortune."
"Delivered rice?" Li Banfeng looked at the cart loaded to the brim with white rice, and then at the coarse multigrain flatbreads in the hands of the three generations. "How much do you get per jin for this rice?"
The old man cast Li Banfeng a sharp glare. "What talk of money? What matters is sincerity! That the Sage is willing to eat my family's rice is a blessing for our entire household."
White rice they couldn't bear to eat themselves, given away to the Sage for free?
Li Banfeng truly couldn't hold back his curiosity and asked, "Just what kind of supreme teachings does this Sage possess?"
The smile vanished from the old man's face, and he put away his flatbread.
The son grew tense as well. Casting wary glances around, he said to Li Banfeng, "On the Sage's mountain, one must speak with propriety. You don't even understand basic etiquette—no wonder the Sage refuses to see you."
The old man waved his hand, signaling the other two to hurry along and say no more to Li Banfeng.
The son quickly steadied the cart, letting the old man pull from the front.
Li Banfeng remarked, "You're stronger than your father. Wouldn't it make more sense for you to pull from the front?"
The son snorted. "This is called sincerity. What would you know?"
A seventy-year-old man pulling a cart to deliver rice was indeed an extraordinary display of sincerity.
From start to finish, the ten-year-old boy had kept his head down, eating his flatbread.
A child that age had a hearty appetite, and a single coarse flatbread was plainly not enough to fill his belly.
Li Banfeng asked the boy, "Have you ever eaten white rice?"
The boy glanced at Li Banfeng, then scurried off to help his father push the cart.
Li Banfeng continued down the mountain. Along the way, he ran into many others seeking learning, as well as people delivering grain, vegetables, and livestock.
Compared to the people up on the mountain, these folk were slightly more talkative. Seeing Li Banfeng, they didn't turn away on the spot and were at least willing to exchange a few words.
Yet whenever he asked where the train station was, everyone skirted the question. They refused to believe Li Banfeng was merely passing through, convinced that he had been rejected in his pursuit of learning and was leaving in disheartened despair.
Every single one of them urged Li Banfeng to stay a few days longer, assuring him that as long as his sincerity was true, he would eventually move the Sage.
Once he was certain that communication with these people was impossible, Li Banfeng stopped asking for directions. Whenever he met someone heading up the mountain, he simply skirted around them, wanting nothing more than to leave as quickly as possible.
Every single person on this mountain, down to every blade of grass, every tree, and even the very air itself, filled Li Banfeng with profound disgust. Even back in Kucaizhuang, he had never felt as thoroughly wretched as he did today.
Reaching the foot of the mountain, Li Banfeng pushed eastward at a rapid pace. After covering over a hundred li, he finally saw a glimmer of hope.
A hill blocked the path ahead, but it was different from the mountains behind him.
It was a much lower knoll, and nestled at its base was a village.
Li Banfeng entered the village. His eyes were greeted by pleasant, fertile fields and working farmers.
The nauseating atmosphere seemed to have dissipated, and Li Banfeng's taut nerves gradually relaxed.
Yet the villagers' nerves were anything but relaxed. Li Banfeng's arrival threw them into intense apprehension, verging on dread.
His clothing terrified them; his manner terrified them; even the tone of his voice struck fear into their hearts.
Li Banfeng could understand such a reaction.
The village was so remote that the locals had likely rarely seen outsiders. Harboring suspicion and caution was entirely natural.
When he asked about a train station, a small number answered that they didn't know, while the vast majority simply stared at him in blank bewilderment, as though such a thing as a train station did not exist in their world at all.
This, too, Li Banfeng could understand.
Many villagers had probably never boarded a train in their lives. Forget people here—even Qin Tianjiu, who had grown up in Yaowanggou, had never ridden a train his entire life. It was completely normal.
Walking from the head of the village to its far end, Li Banfeng heard the clear, ringing sound of children reading aloud.
The youthful, vibrant voices of students convinced Li Banfeng that he had truly left the bounds of the Peak of the Sages.
No matter how remote a place might be, as long as there was a school teaching proper knowledge, it offered vitality and hope.
What were they learning?
"The root of heaven and earth begins in the Sage's heart,
The flux of heaven and earth begins in the Sage's thought,
The foundation of heaven and earth begins in the Sage's virtue,
The source of heaven and earth begins in the Sage's will."
At the word "Sage," Li Banfeng felt his scalp tingle with irritation.
Could this really be considered proper learning?
Still, he shouldn't rush to judgment. Perhaps they were studying traditional lore; having been in Puluo Province for less than a year, there were certainly traditions he had yet to understand.
Drawing closer, he saw that the recitations were not coming from a schoolhouse, but from a paddy field.
A group of children under the age of ten were transplanting rice seedlings into the muddy water while chanting the Sage's scriptures.
This seemed ordinary enough—the children were acquiring cultural learning while simultaneously mastering survival skills.
One boy meticulously planted a neat row of seedlings. Beside him, a middle-aged man stepped into the paddy and crushed the freshly planted seedlings into a mangled pulp.
"Plant them again," the man commanded.
The boy had no idea what he had done wrong and looked up at the man.
A vicious slap sent the boy sprawling into the muddy water. Before the child could scramble to his feet, the man stepped forward and delivered a kick.
The boy struggled for a long moment, unable to rise. The man seized him, dragged him to the edge of the field, snapped off a willow branch, and began lashing him mercilessly.
The boy's parents stood nearby watching. The mother's heart ached so fiercely that she trembled uncontrollably.
The father held her back, muttering the same few words over and over: "It's for his own good. It's all for his own good..."
After striking the boy several more times, the man barked, "Don't cry! Show some backbone! If you can't even endure this little bit of pain, what right do you have to study the principles of the Sage?"
Was this supposed to be normal?
Li Banfeng stood by the edge of the field, the veins on his forehead bulging.
Unpleasant memories from his own childhood surged into his mind.
The man glared at the boy. "Do you know why I hit you? Do you know why I made you replant the seedlings?"
The boy shook his head in blank terror.
The man roared, "Where doubt resides, intent lacks sincerity! If I told you to replant the seedlings, you should have just replanted them! What business do you have harboring doubt? Truly rotten wood that cannot be carved!"
Seeing the child covered in bruises and welts, the man said with a cold, indifferent face, "I'll apply some medicine for you."
With that, he grabbed a handful of coarse salt and prepared to rub it into the child's raw flesh.
The boy shook in sheer terror. His parents trembled along with him on the side, still chanting under their breath, "Child, it's for your own good. It's all for your own good."
The middle-aged man gripped the salt tightly. "Bear the pain and reflect on your faults right here! If you dare make another sound, you won't need to come seek learning tomorrow. You're not worthy—"
*Crack!*
Li Banfeng planted a boot square into the man's face.
The man stumbled back several paces and crashed into the paddy, his nose kicked crooked and bleeding profusely.
He stared at Li Banfeng in stunned disbelief.
Everyone around froze, their eyes fixed on Li Banfeng.
Through muffled, bloody lips, the man stammered, "Who... who are you?"
Li Banfeng's brim was pulled low, and his back was to the sunlight, keeping his face hidden in shadow.
"Don't ask who I am. Do you know why I kicked you?"
The man stared blankly.
*Thud!*
Li Banfeng drove another kick straight into his bewildered face.
The man fell flat on his back in the muddy water, swallowing a mouthful of silt and mud before taking a long time to push himself back up.
"You... what right do you have to hit people?"
Two of his teeth had been knocked out, making his speech leak air with a lisp.
*Thud!*
Li Banfeng kicked him once more.
"Where doubt resides, intent lacks sincerity. When I beat you, just take your beating honestly! What business do you have harboring doubt? Truly rotten wood that cannot be carved."
With that, Li Banfeng grabbed the man by the hair and rained several more kicks into him.
The man shrieked and wailed until Li Banfeng clamped his mouth shut. "Don't cry! Show some backbone! If you can't even endure this little bit of pain, what right do you have to talk about the principles of the Sage?
"I'll apply some medicine for you. Bear the pain and reflect on your faults right here! If you dare make another sound, go find a rope and hang yourself. If you can't bring yourself to do it, I'll help you. Do you understand?"
With that, Li Banfeng scooped up a handful of the coarse salt and rubbed it directly into the man's bloody face.
The man howled in agony. "He's beating me! He's beating me...!"
Li Banfeng frowned. "You really didn't understand, did you? Fine. I'll take you to find a place to hang."
The surrounding villagers were scared out of their wits. One man cried out, "He struck a disciple of the Sage! Stop him quickly, don't let him get away!"
A disciple of the Sage?
This was the kind of disciple the Sage produced?
And they wanted to stop him?
What was wrong with these people?
They willingly allowed this scoundrel to torment their own children, and they did so with utter submission?
"So what if I hit him?" Li Banfeng hoisted the middle-aged man up, gave his wrist a sharp twist, and snapped his neck on the spot.
He had killed a disciple of the Sage!
Yes, killed him.
Leaving trash like this in the world was nothing but a scourge.
The villagers surged forward to block Li Banfeng's path, shouting loudly, "Don't let him leave!"
"Drag him up the Peak of the Sages and have him sliced into a thousand pieces!"
Li Banfeng tossed the middle-aged man's corpse aside, strode directly out of the paddy field, and fixed his gaze upon the crowd of villagers. "Go tell your Sage that I'm the one who killed him. Let's see who dares stop me today!"
As the words fell, absolute silence descended upon the crowd.
Li Banfeng walked away with large strides, and not a single soul dared trail behind him.
One villager whispered, "There's no need for us to stop him. He has committed a monstrous crime—the Sage will never let him leave!"
Li Banfeng let out a derisive scoff. He would see just how much capability this Sage truly possessed.
By dusk, Li Banfeng returned to the village.
He truly hadn't been able to walk away. After walking for half a day, he had ended up right back in this village.
Seeing Li Banfeng appear, every villager retreated into their homes and bolted their doors shut.
Li Banfeng sat by the entrance of the village and patted the liquor gourd. "Big Sister, have you remembered anything? Where on earth is this place?"
The gourd pondered for a long moment before answering, "Big Sister has been thinking hard, but I really don't seem to have ever been here before."
"What about you?" Li Banfeng asked the old teapot.
The old teapot coughed twice. "This place is fucking bizarre. I've never been here either..."
Forget it. He would return to the Portable Abode and ask his wife.
Just as Li Banfeng reached for his key, he suddenly heard footsteps approaching in the distance.
He rose to his feet and asked in a low voice, "Who is it?"
A soft, delicate female voice drifted over: "Benefactor, it's me! However did you end up here?"
Chapter 240