A Spiritual Stone Lamp

My name is Gu Hongyan. I know a person in my life named Shen Moyuan. He knocked on the door of Yanjing Academy three times. The first time he was kicked out because his background was too low, the second time he was kicked out because he offended the examiner, and the third time he finally got the first place in the exam. Then he lit a spiritual stone lamp in an abandoned Taoist temple outside Yanjing City. That lamp illuminated more than just three old altar tables and seven broken chairs—it was the starting point of the first heaven-translating sect in the entire Dayan Jianghu. In the past thirty years, I have watched this Taoist temple grow from three or five people to three thousand disciples. I have watched Shen Moyuan's brothers and sisters come and go - Xu Fengge threw his cup in public and strode away, Wang Zhenshan said in the moonlight, "Mo Yuan, do you want to preach or make money?", And Cheng Donglai stole the secret scroll on a snowy night to set up his own business. I watched a blacksmith's son grow wildly in the gate, threw the token and walked out of the mountain gate without looking back; I watched the imperial court crush dozens of rudders into powder with a "ban on religion"; I also watched a peasant boy detonate the entire world with his literary talent on the Tianji Mirror. Someone asked Shen Moyuan: What have you done in your life? He said: "In the deepest night, a lamp is lit. That's all." This is a story about ideals, betrayal, perseverance and decent departure. If you recognize the people in the story - shush, don't say their names. They have long been part of the world.