After asking for a pot of hot water from Liao Yuan, who was in charge of the affairs of the monks in Yunshuitang, the little monk Takemoto carefully brought it into the monk's room and said to Aslan who was sitting at the table: "Uncle, we are late.
Liao Yuan said that it was past dinner time in the dining hall and there was no food left."
Aslan sighed and said hello: "Zhuhui, get up. Open the bag and take out three noodles."
The little ascetic Zhuhui, who was curled up in the corner of the hot bed, jumped up, opened the cloth bag beside him, took out three noodles and put them on the table: "Uncle, after eating these, there are three left."
Aslan nodded, and each person shared a piece of bread. The three of them wolfed down the hot water in the pot, and finished the bread in a few mouthfuls.
Takemoto licked the crumbs on his palms and said angrily: "There is obviously still food in the dining hall. When I came back, I saw someone coming out with a food box. The scallion noodles are so fragrant..."
Aslan reassured: "Since we are staying in someone else's temple, we should abide by their rules. Since we missed the meal, we will just endure it. Everyone will go to the dining hall to eat again tomorrow morning."
Zhuhui muttered: "They just look down on us!"
Aslan touched his nose and was silent for a while.
Zhuhui's complaints are unknown to Aslan. They come from the South Road of Qilian Mountains. The temple is located in Tianmatai Mountain. It is surrounded by the vast desert and there are few people to live in. Therefore, the incense is very problematic. A small temple like theirs, which comes from a remote place, is poor.
When visiting a temple in a prosperous place like Xingqing Mansion, it is common to be looked down upon by others.
Because the temple has no permanent property and few believers, for hundreds of years, the elders of the temple have traveled abroad, picked up orphans without care, and brought them back to the temple to become monks. Therefore, there are all kinds of people in the temple, such as Aslan, who was born in
Zedan, a small country in the Western Region, has blue eyes and a high nose, and it is obvious at a glance that he is not from China. The situation of Zhumoto and Zhuhui is also similar.
When Aslan was 8 years old, he wandered on the old road in the Western Regions. He was adopted by a senior monk in the temple and given the name Xuan Heng. However, Aslan had no talent for spiritual practice and could only enter the world of vision and consciousness.
No deposit.
When he was about to turn thirty, the temple planned to open a conversion method for him, but it contained a lot of risks. Aslan was timid and did not dare to try it. The abbot had no choice but to let him switch to secular affairs.
Now Aslan has taken over the secular affairs for six years, traveling here and there, and is deeply aware of the difficulty of making a living. Tianmatai Temple sounds beautiful, but the reality is very bad. There are more than 200 monks in the temple, and they only rely on the canopy from the mountain.
Making a living on hundreds of acres of poor land, the mountain is a bare rocky mountain, surrounded by vast deserts, the roads are remote, transportation is inconvenient, there are no tenants, no property, and fewer pilgrims, making life extremely difficult.
The monks in the temple all rely on the lay monks to travel around, begging for alms, or doing small business to earn some money as a supplement.
After Aslan became a lay monk, he spent many years running around in the secular world, and even he almost forgot the name of his family's Xuanheng Dharma.
Sometimes Aslan would also envy those big and famous temples. For example, the Longmatai Temple they were looking for in Xingqing Mansion this time was only one word different from Tianmatai Temple, but his life was like a world between heaven and earth.
Don't.
Longmatai Temple has 1,200 acres of fertile land in Xingqing Prefecture. There are 13 real estate shops on the street in front of the temple. The annual income from land rent and house rent is more than 2,000 taels of silver. This is not the bulk of the money. The bulk of it is donated by pilgrims who come and go.
Incense money!
Envy is envy, but Aslan is not a person who has forgotten his roots. He was raised by the monks of Tianmatai Temple eating every mouthful they saved from their own mouths. No matter how barren Tianmatai Mountain is, it is his home and the only thing he can do.
What we must do is to find ways to earn more money for the temple and bring more food back.
He still remembers that the seven or eight infants who were still in their infancy and waiting to be fed were orphans picked up by the monks when they were traveling abroad, and they were the hope for the inheritance of Tianmatai Temple.
This time when he went down the mountain, Aslan went to Hui'an Temple to deliver medicine. This was a bottle of black ginseng pills refined from Tianmatai Mountain. There were three pills in total, with a total price of 1,500 taels of silver. This was Tianmatai Temple's medicine for more than ten years.
The biggest profit ever!
The refining of three Wushen pills consumed all the elixirs produced in the small medicine garden of less than half an acre in Tianmatai Mountain. In order to ensure that no medicinal materials were wasted and no useless elixirs were produced, Master Long Ji, who was in the Arhat realm, personally took action.
A successful alchemy.
This business was finally negotiated by Aslan by chance. The elixir was exchanged for silver. What he said was unbelievable in the entire Buddhist world. After receiving Aslan's flying talisman message, the abbot and abbot of Tianmatai Temple
After deliberation with the four leaders for a long time, we finally agreed to this business - this winter, the entire Qilian Mountains were hit by a white disaster, and Tianmatai Temple really couldn't survive.
After getting the silver, Aslan originally planned to buy a batch of grain, seeds and camels to send back, but when he was delivering the silver at Hui'an Hall, he accidentally saw the selling price of snow lotus on the water sign.
Sixteen-leaf Kunlun Mountain Snow Lotus, sixteen taels each! At first, Aslan regarded it as a joke, but he couldn't stop the doctor at the drug store from talking about it. From that day on, he paid attention to the Snow Lotus.
In the next few days, the price of snow lotus kept rising, almost every day. The whole Xingqing Mansion was in a state of excitement. Everyone rushed to chase the snow lotus, bought it at a high price, and then waited for the price to rise. There were rumors everywhere that the snow lotus made a fortune.
story.
Aslan couldn't help but use his precious flying talisman to inform Tianmatai Temple of the situation. The frightened monks in the temple were also very concerned about this and discussed several times in a row whether to purchase snow lotus.
When the Kunlun Mountain Snow Lotus rose to 25 taels, the temple finally agreed to Aslan's motion and decided to join in the hype. The abbot told Aslan in the flying talisman that as long as one thousand five hundred taels of silver became three thousand taels
, I sold it immediately. I would rather make less money than be greedy. Even if it rises higher later, it has nothing to do with Tianmatai Temple.
So, Aslan spent all his money to buy snow lotuses, and now sixty snow lotuses are in the monk's house where he rented a loan. In order to maintain the quality of these snow lotuses, Aslan also spent 3 taels of silver and asked craftsmen to make them.
A layered sandalwood box specially used to store snow lotus. The cost of these three taels of silver cost Aslan and the other three more than half of their two-month stay in Xingqing Mansion, which directly caused the three of them to fall into trouble.
.
When the price of snow lotus continued to rise, Aslan, Takemoto, and Zhuhui counted the profits on their fingers every day, and were so excited that they couldn't sleep every night.
Unfortunately, the good times did not last long. When the price of snow lotus rose to 35 taels, it suddenly stagnated.
A few days later, I heard that Jinbo Auction House was closed for half a month due to relocation. He had been involved in the snow lotus speculation for a month, and Aslan was quite familiar with it. He knew that Jinbo Auction House was involved in the snow lotus market.
It had an effect, so he immediately felt something was not good.
Sure enough, the price of Kunlun Mountain Snow Lotus plummeted, 35 taels, 32 taels, 30 taels, 28 taels, 26 taels...
When the price of snow lotus fell below 30 taels, Aslan wanted to sell it. Unfortunately, he visited more than 20 pharmacies in Xingqing Prefecture, and he couldn't sell even one, even if he lowered the price to
25 Liang Bao line, no one will accept it!
Fortunately, when they went to the streets to continue selling snow lotus today, they heard the good news that Jinbo Auction House successfully completed its relocation, so they opened their doors ahead of schedule, and the opening time is scheduled for the day after tomorrow!
Aslan breathed a sigh of relief today. He planned to go to the auction house to register tomorrow and sell the sixty snow lotuses at once. The auction base price was set at 26 taels each. Aslan prayed to the Buddha to bless him and only made 1 tael.
Just fine!
The next morning, Aslan asked Takemoto and Zhuhui to carry the box, and the three of them went to Jinbo Auction House. The place was already overcrowded, but fortunately there were servants from the auction house to maintain order, so there was no trouble.
Aslan stood in a long queue, and when it was almost noon, it was finally his turn.
Only then did he realize that if he wanted to participate in the auction house's auction, he also needed Lao Shizi's membership card. Just when he was panicking, the other party casually asked about the goods he wanted to auction. After learning that it was Kunlun Mountain Snow Lotus, he raised his hand
Wave and let him in.
It turns out that tomorrow's auction is a "Snow Lotus Special". All merchants participating in the snow lotus auction do not need membership cards as long as the quantity of goods is more than 10.
The master of the auction house inspected the snow lotus brought by Aslan and asked people to carry it into the warehouse. He made a record with pen and paper and asked Aslan to collect it.
When asked about the bottom price, Aslan was cruel and changed the original price of 26 taels to 25 taels - after waiting in such a long queue just now, he no longer had any expectations of making money.
If you make money, it is the blessing of the Buddha. If you don't, just think that your hard work was in vain. It doesn't matter if you work in vain, as long as you don't waste the life-saving money in the temple.