Evolution of the heavens

Chapter 225 A Dream

When Lu Ya heard about his friend Chen Zheng again, it was midsummer two years after they parted.

I heard that after two years, Chen Zheng became an official again, and became a small local official in a certain county in Luoyang.

Lu Ya made a special trip to Luoyang for this purpose.

Seeing Chen Zheng again, his appearance has become thin and brittle, his bones protruding, but his eyes are still bright, bright like torches, but the one who was on the Dragon and Tiger List two years ago, Jinshi and the first The handsome appearance of a young man who had achieved success in his youth was gone.

"Did he change so much in just two years?"

Lu Ya sighed in his heart.

Chen Zheng received him warmly, as if he was afraid that Lu Ya would ask, so he took the initiative to say:
"It's been two years, but I haven't been able to write any poems that can be handed down to the world. I'm still depressed at home, so I'm an official again."

Lu Ya carefully held a certain degree, and didn't dare to ask too much, for fear of destroying the friendship between the two of them, so he only asked with concern:
"I'm just worried about you, are you really used to life in the officialdom?"

Didn't this good friend give up his bright future because he couldn't bear the flattery in the officialdom?

Now, when he becomes an official again, he no longer has the original starting point.

magistrate...

Chen Zheng smiled and said, "It's too easy for me to always provide food and clothing for my wife and children. It's not easy to be famous for poetry."

Lu Ya didn't continue to ask, but just talked with him about other things at the wine table, and talked about the friendship he hadn't seen in two years.

Finally, when Lu Ya left, he left some money for Chen Zheng.

Chen Zheng also did not refuse.

Just two people saying goodbye.

Sitting on the carriage, Lu Ya sighed in his heart. Although he maintained a tacit understanding with Chen Zheng, he didn't ask, and Chen Zheng didn't say much, and he behaved very freely.But some things are obvious at a glance.

Obviously, after resigning from office and leaving Chang'an, Chen Zheng didn't wait for his poems to become famous in the world. Without an official position, his daily life has been difficult to maintain, and he became extremely embarrassed.

Due to his livelihood, he must have felt anxious and uneasy, and he re-entered the officialdom. This choice may have been made after a long time.

This is already half despairing of my poetic aspirations.

Lu Ya is more worried now.

Chen Zhengsheng was proud and arrogant by nature, and he re-entered the officialdom now, of course, to maintain his life, but today is a long time ago, two years ago, the childhood with him who was honored with the dragon and tiger list in the past, has already been promoted.

For example, Lu Ya was promoted from school clerk to Yuanwai Lang, and some would flirt with flattery to curry favor with superior officials, and those who built official favors were even promoted three ranks in a row.

The same person who was on the Dragon and Tiger List in the past, but in order to make a living again, he had to obey orders and bow down to the idiot who he used to despise.

It was hard for him to imagine whether his proud friend, with his arrogant self-esteem, could really bear such a blow and trauma.

With such worries.

Lu Ya wrote a special letter every three months to ask Luoyang officials about his friend's situation.

In this way, another three years have passed.

This year is another midsummer, and Lu Ya has been promoted again, and has been promoted to Yushi.

But he was not so happy.

It's just because in the past three years, his best friend really started to become depressed as he had feared, and his originally wild and unruly personality became more exaggerated and difficult to restrain himself.

Even though Chang'an and Luoyang are far away, Lu Ya can put himself in the situation and feel the conflicts and struggles in his friend's heart.

With such worries.

A month later, Lu Ya came to Luoyang again.

"What, he disappeared?" Lu Ya changed his color and asked, "What do you mean by disappearing?"

The official of the government replied: "It was about half a month ago. A few colleagues and I accompanied Mr. Chen on a business trip to Bin County. When we stayed at the Jinghe Dafo Temple at night, Mr. Chen suddenly screamed. A sound woke us up, and then we watched him yelling and running barefoot out of the house, into the night, we couldn't catch up, and finally we didn't know where he went. Finally, the county government searched the local mountains for several days, There is no trace of Mr. Chen either."

"How could this be?"

Lu Ya's face changed slightly, and he murmured:

"How can such a big person disappear like this? Doesn't his wife and children care about him?"

"What happened that night?"

He pressed the officials.

The yamen official said: "Master Chen has never had much contact with people, even his wife said that he was in a daze. I could see clearly that night that he really seemed to have gone crazy."

Lu Ya felt extremely sad all of a sudden.

are you crazy?
He could sense his depression from the letters from his good friends over the past few years, but he couldn't understand, even if he was crazy, how could such a big person not find a trace.

In a trance.

He always felt that he could find this good friend.

For this reason, Lu Ya stayed in Luoyang for another month, searched for a long time, and finally had to give up.

And when he saw Chen Zheng again.

It was eight years later.

This year, Lu Ya was ordered to patrol the south of the Five Ridges, and stayed overnight in Ankang County on the way.

For eight years, he always had the feeling that he was about to wake up from a big dream.

It seems that waking up from a dream is not far away.

Fortunately, he was on official business, and he was in a hurry before it was bright. The clerk at the post station told him that there were white-fronted worms infesting the front post, and they had already eaten many people. Pedestrians only dared to pass by during the day, my lord. Let's wait until dawn.

"It doesn't matter, I have brought so many followers, and I am very afraid of tigers." Lu Ya waved his hands, ignored the warning, and hurried on the road.

With the help of Xingyue lightning, the group headed forward, and when they were about to pass Jingyang Gang ahead, a five-foot-tall tiger jumped out of the grass!
A fishy smell rushed towards the face, shaking the mountains and forests.

The tiger rushed straight towards Lu Ya.

Under the threat of death, Lu Ya's eyes became more and more enlightened, and the premonition of waking up from the dream became stronger and stronger.

But the strange thing is, just when he thought that he was going to be eaten by a tiger, a dream of life, a thought of life and death, might be the true meaning of life.

When the tiger pounced on Lu Ya, it stopped suddenly, then turned sharply and jumped into the grass.

Immediately after the group of people heard the grass, a human voice came out, as if a person was hiding in the grass and murmured fearfully:

"It's dangerous, almost..."

As soon as he heard this voice, Lu Ya was struck by lightning. The voice was very familiar. He suddenly thought of whose voice it was, and immediately stepped forward and asked loudly:

"Listen to this voice, could it be my friend Chen Zheng!"

Hearing Lu Ya's inquiry.

There was a moment of silence among the grass.

A moment later, a shy and ashamed cry came from a man, and after a long time, he said in a low voice:
"Next, that's right."

Lu Ya immediately stepped forward and said excitedly: "Brother, why did you come here? You know that you have been missing for nearly ten years, please show up and see."

Chen Zheng hid in the grass and replied with a low sigh: "I am no longer a human being. You have seen my appearance just now. If I show up, you will definitely feel fear and loathing when you see me. I will also I'm even more ashamed, so it's hard to meet you. However, I didn't expect that after such a long time, I would meet you by coincidence. It really makes me excited. I'll talk for a while."

Lu Ya took a step forward: "You and I are life and death friends, how could I despise you."

When he woke up from the dream, Lu Ya seemed to be no longer Lu Ya. He fully accepted this extraordinary phenomenon, perhaps because Cao Li was the friend he had been looking for, so he didn't think it was strange at all, so he stood by the grass and communicated with the tiger's voice up:

Rumors from all over the world, news about some of their mutual friends in the past, Lu Ya's current official position, and congratulations from Chen Zheng...

Even after more than ten years, the two of them are still as honest as when they were young, when they were just in high school. Lu Ya asked how his good friend became like this.

The tiger in the grass said: "Since I re-entered the official position, my mood has changed a lot, and I have occasional illnesses. That night, I was ill and ran out of the house with a roar, only to feel that the outside world has nothing to do with me. , Unknowingly, I ran into the Qinling Mountains, ran, and unconsciously touched the ground with my hands and exchanged with my feet. When I came back to my senses, I found that my hands and feet had grown hair. After dawn, I When I took a photo at the pool by the mountain, I turned into a tiger."

"I wanted to commit suicide right away, but at this time, a rabbit ran past me. As soon as I saw it, the humanity in my body disappeared. When my humanity recovered, my mouth was already covered with blood Rabbit fur and blood."

"This is the first time I have become a tiger. In the future, I will regain my humanity for a period of time within a day, and I will be able to speak some human words, and even continue to write poems. At the same time, I will look at me with human eyes. When I turned into a tiger and killed those lives, I felt ashamed, terrified, sad and indignant, and I didn’t understand how I could turn into a tiger when I was a normal human being.”

"But as time went by, I gradually realized that I gradually became a tiger more and more, and I didn't understand it because I was a person, as if I should have been a tiger, but When I come back to my senses, when I look at the tiger's thoughts from a human perspective, I feel shuddering again, as if my human nature will gradually be completely swallowed up by the animal nature in the future."

"I'm talking about this with you now, and I'm also afraid. If I really forget that I am a person one day, it will be the saddest result for me."

"So before I completely lose my humanity, I have one thing to ask for."

Lu Ya held his breath and said, "Please tell me."

The voice said: "What I want is nothing else. I have written hundreds of poems in the years since I became a tiger. I hope you can write them down for me, even if one of them can be handed down to future generations. If it can be handed down, I will die in peace."

After that, he began to chant.

Lu Ya memorized it completely, but when he was sad, he still felt the same way back then. Every poem felt that there was something missing in a certain subtlety.

Heart sighs.

But he didn't speak.

Chen Zheng laughed at himself: "Speaking of which, it's not that I can't understand why I'm in this situation. As I am now, according to common sense, I should have entrusted my wife and children to You, I have been separated from them for more than ten years, and I don’t know how they are now, but compared to the suffering my wife and children have suffered in the past ten years, the first time I saw you, I still only thought about my poems.”

Lu Ya asked: "So, do you think it's because of this that you became a tiger?"

Chen Zhengdao: "I don't know, I just thought of my previous experience, maybe it has something to do with it. When I was a human, I didn't like interacting with people very much, so they all said that I am noble. I am a very complicated person. Self-abased and confident."

"I want to pass on the name of poetry to future generations, but I don't take the initiative to discuss poetry with others, and I don't communicate with people who are better than me."

"At the same time, I don't want to be with ordinary people worse than me."

Chen Zheng let out a deep sigh:
"To sum it up. I've lived my whole life in a state of anxiety between skeptical arrogance and blind confidence."

"I am deeply afraid that I am not a beautiful jade, so I dare not study it hard, but I half believe that I am a beautiful jade, so I refuse to be mediocre and hang out with rubble."

"So I lived in isolation, but because of my livelihood, I had to become an official again. After I became an official, I didn't want to make friends with others, so I became more and more alienated from everything in the world."

"Now that I have become a tiger, thinking about it, because of my own anxiety, the only bit of talent I have has been drained. In fact, I really don't want to be famous for poetry and prose. It's just a person with a little talent. I am afraid that I have only this little talent, so I am not willing to work hard, and I often hate it because I am lazy because I don’t study hard.”

"It was this anxiety and being so vulnerable, like broken glass, that ruined my life."

"Even after I became a tiger, I was still anxious."

Lu Ya listened to Chen Zheng finish all this.

The forest was silent.

"I'm really in pain." Chen Zheng cried in his voice, "Thank you for being able to meet you again, and for being able to listen to me talk about these things, so that I can gain a little bit of being human for a short time before being completely devoured by animal nature. hapiness."

All the people in the forest also cried when they heard it.

Chen Zheng murmured, "It's so hard."

"Only when there is pain can we let go of the pain."

The light in Lu Ya's eyes was dreamy:
"When you can transcend these things, then you will attain the Tao. In this life, it will be a problem, and the article will come later."

Chen Zheng asked in the grass: "Have the Tao? What article?"

Lu Ya smiled and walked behind the grass.

"Why did you come in!" Chen Zheng was like a frightened big cat, with its tiger's head curled up, and it tiptoed back a lot.

Lu Ya smiled, stepped forward and touched Chen Zheng's head:
"We are not in a hurry. If you don't realize it in one life, it will be two lives. If you don't realize it in two lives, it will be three lives. Even if it is thousands of lives, I will save you."

After saying a word, his eyes regained their clarity.

The world turned upside down dream.

Lu Ya woke up from the dream.

Go back to sleep.

This side of the world also sleeps together for a second return to the cage.

The second dream.

……

(End of this chapter)