Chapter 1080: Rain from the Sky
In the Green Apricot Nation south of the Great Ditch on Treasure Vase Continent.
A straw-sandaled youth with a sword on his back was taking big bites of a steaming hot bucket cake. Standing at the edge of a crowded theater stage, he didn't look at the heavily made-up female lead, but only at the props.
The night was deep and heavy. Inside the mansion in the capital of Jade Proclamation Nation that indeed often had ghosts but none that were seductive female spirits, a Daoist who had been busy all day finally had some leisure. He lit a lamp and read a miscellaneous book. On the table were two small dishes of "accompanying reading" snacks. This fortune-telling Daoist with some fame, Wu Di, was flipping through a copy of "The Works of Nature," reading aloud as he went, though he only stuck to the content he liked. He read the chapters "Ceramics" and "Forging" twice over. During this time, the Daoist started reading from the preface, his voice full of energy: "Among the myriad things..." "This book has nothing whatsoever to do with imperial examinations and scholarly advancement. Good, well said indeed. This is a truly weighty self-praise!" The female voice outside the window drifted in eerily, truly chilling: "Then why are you reading it so enthusiastically?" The Daoist shamelessly replied, "This poor Daoist is a private-register Daoist. Why would I imitate those scholars heading to the capital for examinations?" Later, the female ghost in bright red dress who stood by the window—once a palace official responsible for opening the empress's boxes and inspecting her pomegranate skirts—got so bored listening that she stood on tiptoe, reached out, and tapped the window paper with a bent finger, urging the Daoist to switch to reading the chapter "Qu Nie" which sounded much more interesting. The money-grubbing Daoist pressed his hand on the book and said she'd have to pay. The female ghost wasn't willing to waste money on that, so she floated away with her feet off the ground.
The evening drum of the temple sounded leisurely. The middle-aged scholar copying scriptures stopped his brush, shook his wrist, and turned to look outside the door. Under the eaves, last year's cobweb hung broken and swaying. He inexplicably recalled the content of a literati's notebook: The Buddhist sutra says, "All sentient beings have Buddha nature."
Inside a small nation's secretarial department, a man who had long been a "gentleman of the beams"—a book borrower—sat on a high suspended beam, looking down at an official who had just finished his shift. The official put a thick cotton robe over his official garments and came to select a few favorite rare books. He looked around left and right; there was no one around, but in fact, only the clerk at the door was keeping watch. At any movement, the clerk, having been bribed, would remind the official inside with a cough. The official placed three books into his bosom, but then