Chapter 32 Practice Tai Chi in the Park
Lin Luoran and Liu Zheng stay weirdly quiet along the way home. Lin Luoran doesn’t know why she blushes so much and why her heart beats so fast.
All she can remember is that when they arrive at her house, Liu Zheng says, “It was a makeshift…”
He is interrupted by Lin Luoran in a loud voice, “I knew!” Her face is red like the bottom of a monkey. Lin Luoran gets off the car in a hurry, as if a fire was burning in her back.
Liu Zheng’s eyes are filled with laughter. Looking at Lin Luoran’s hurrying back, he doesn’t think that she is ridiculous. Lin Luoran’s usual calmness comes to Liu Zheng’s mind. The contrast is cute, he thinks.
Lin Luoran hurries upstairs like a ghost is chasing her. She drinks two glasses of water to make her blush fade away. She feels funny after calming down. She is no longer a pubescent girl, and it is awkward to be so shy today.
Lin Luoran transports herself into the space and eats some cherry tomatoes. Looking at these thriving ginsengs, Lin Luoran is a little embarrassed.
Thanks to Liu Zheng’s help today, she didn’t admit taking the seeds and managed to get away with it when the tall guy was in a trance. However, with these ginsengs growing in her space, she can’t fool herself even if she can deceive everyone else.
She has to give something back.
After washing, Lin Luoran sits on the carpet she recently bought in the meditating posture she learnt from TV shows. She remembers that as she was dragged to Liu Zheng’s car, the man was saying that his last name was Mu and he would not give up. Lin Luoran laughs. Since the man said that he wouldn’t give up, she may just wait for him to find her again and make up for him with some ginseng seeds.
After coming up with a solution, Lin Luoran braces herself up, gradually slows down her breath and begins to battle with the Reiki inside her in a good condition.
Cultivation emphasizes going along with your heart, and you may reap what you sow. At this time, Lin Luoran doesn’t know that thanks to her absence of greediness, she manages not to cut open her moral mind and leaves an underlying problem for her later cultivation.
The bead glows under the moonlight. Lin Luoran feels peace in her body and mind. Reiki flows like mercury inside her boy, but it can’t get through narrow meridians.
Lin Luoran’s personality is like weeds. She will not lose hope in adversities. Lin Luoran is not discouraged when the Reiki inside her can’t break through narrow meridians. She just keeps guiding Reiki to move along her meridians and to make attempts over and over again.
Lin Luoran cultivates all night long. It is almost morning and she still can’t make any breakthroughs. It is strange that she doesn’t feel tired at all. Instead, Lin Luoran is quite refreshed. She feels that there is nothing better in the world than cultivation.
Anyway, the sun is almost up. Lin Luoran figures that since there is no time for her to sleep, it may be better to do a morning exercise.
Lin Luoran lives not far away from a park. She trots there to warm up.
People living in the metropolis have to bear lots of pressure. They must live their lives at a fast pace. Many of them work at day and engage in social activities at night, just like spinning tops. Lin Luoran is the only young girl among all the retired old men and women in the park.
Lin Luoran feels too embarrassed to compete with old ladies in using the limited fitness facilities, so she just hangs around the park. Lin Luoran attracts lots of attention since she is the only beautiful young girl.
But she doesn’t notice this at all. Lin Luoran’s attention is totally attracted by an old man in white gown who is practicing Tai Chi in the center of the park.
Tai Chi has been regarded as a way of keeping good health, and Lin Luoran has met lots of Tai Chi masters. Back then, she didn’t begin to cultivate and she believed that those masters were just making hollow gestures. Lin Luoran couldn’t care less about Tai Chi.
The old man in front of her looks quite aged. His eyebrows have almost turned white but his cheeks are still ruddy. His moves are casual because he doesn’t strictly follow the traditional Tai Chi moves. However, Lin Luoran can feel his lingering charm.
What surprises her more is that an invisible airstream is generated by his moves. The airstream keeps the surrounding gray smoke away from the old man.
Lin Luoran has learned from the plants that the gray smoke is the turbid air in the world. She has to rely on the bead to stay away from it after the bone marrow cleansing. Therefore, Lin Luoran is amazed that there is someone who can make the gray smoke back off through human force.
The old man in white gown finishes the practice and notices a young girl staring at him without blinking. He nods smilingly, “Do you want to learn Tai Chi, little girl?”
Lin Luoran is not annoyed by being called a “little girl”. She hesitates for a while and answers, “Can you teach me?”
She knows that the old man has some real skills, and she worries that there may be some rules of “only passing on to males” or “never pass on to people out of the family”.
Hearing Lin Luoran’s concerns, the old man laughs, “I only learned Tai Chi to kill time after the retirement and I have absolutely no cheats. Do you still want to learn?”
Just to kill time? Lin Luoran is amazed. Are there really self-taught talents of Tai Chi in the world? Looking at other old men who are practicing Tai Chi beside them whose moves are traditional but can’t keep the gray smoke away, Lin Luoran is lost in her thoughts, frowning.
The old man in white looks at Lin Luoran and laughs, “You are a smart girl. You can tell that I am different from the others, then fate must have brought us together. I have to teach you something today.”
Lin Luoran will be stupid to refuse the pennies from heaven! After all, who doesn’t have some secrets? Even Lin Luoran has a mysterious space, why can’t an old man have his way of keeping healthy?
Figuring this out, Lin Luoran calls the old man “master” with pleasure and says she will send a gift later to make this official.
The old man approves Lin Luoran’s words. He looks at her with smiley eyes and says, “Not many young people now still care about the etiquette. Seems that I have to teach you something serious.”
Lin Luoran giggles. The old man just slipped up and overturned his words of “just to kill time”.
The old man is aware of his slip of tongue and laughs it off. He starts to explain to Lin Luoran the differences between him and the others. The old man has a mind of cherishing the talents. He sees that Lin Luoran is gifted so he gives a particularly detailed lecture. As for Lin Luoran, she believes that the old man has real skills. She listens particularly carefully since she is now in the bottleneck of cultivation.
Without noticing, an hour has passed. Lin Luoran figures it may be the time that Baojia comes to pick her up for work, so she makes an appointment with the old man that she will come on the next day.
Lin Luoran trots home and realizes—She hasn’t got the name of her “master”. How thoughtless she was!
