Chapter 978 Guanyin Temple
Late at night in the Guanyin Temple, Qi Tongwei knelt on a cushion, and the copper bells rang in the draft. The eternal lamp on the altar suddenly swayed violently, and a little fox appeared in the incense mist: "The wrath of the land cannot be quelled by human power. The only way is to awaken the villagers' awe." It tapped its paw lightly, and an ancient mural appeared on the wall - the ancestors wore mushroom masks and offered sacrifices to the mountains and forests.
The next day, Qi Tongwei led the villagers to clean up the abandoned greenhouse. When they dug two meters deep, they dug out a rusty iron box, which contained a confession from the former village chief: "I used industrial waste as nutrients, thinking I could hide it from the world... Those dead fungi appeared in my dreams every night..." The handwriting was finally stained with blood and stopped abruptly.
The villagers were silent. Aunt Wang trembled as she lit three incense sticks and stuck them under the old locust tree: "Mountain God, we are confused..." Qi Tongwei took the opportunity to announce the establishment of the "Earth Vein Altar", and organized villagers to recite the "Ksitigarbha Sutra" on the first day of every month to resolve resentment with traditional rituals. Zhang Dazhu sneered: "Playing tricks!" But that night, his room was crawling with foul-smelling hyphae.
On the day when the altar was completed, villagers from all over the country came. Qi Tongwei, wearing a monk's robe, led everyone around the plantation. Amid the chanting of Buddhist scriptures, the little fox turned into a golden stream of light and sank into the earth. Suddenly, a sweet rain fell from the sky, and the mushrooms washed by the rain lost their strange colors and grew white folds again. Zhang Dazhu, who was watching, knelt down with a plop, and the dark green lines on his neck began to fade.
When the media visited again, they saw a different scene. Tourists wearing bamboo hats followed the monks to pick wild mushrooms in the forest, and the melodious Buddhist music was in their ears. In the ecological greenhouse, students observed the growth of mycelium, and the guide talked about the truth that "all things have spirits." Aunt Wang hung prayer flags at the door of the homestay: "Living here can bring spiritual energy!"
The most magical thing is the "Earth Vein Altar". On every full moon night, a green light rises from the altar, and the mushrooms spontaneously arrange themselves into lotus shapes. Tourists rush to take pictures, but they don't know that this is the gentle response of the land. Qi Tongwei still insists on chanting scriptures every day. He found that as the sound of Buddha spreads, there are fewer conflicts in the village - Zhang Dazhu took the initiative to serve as an environmental supervisor, and the son of the former village chief began to study ancient planting methods.
Three years later, a UN ecological survey team came to the village. The experts praised the soil samples: "This self-purification ability is simply a miracle!" Qi Tongwei took them to visit the altar, and the faint chanting of Buddha came from the incense mist. The leader of the survey team thought: "The ecological ethics you established with faith may be more effective than any technology."
At the entrance of the plantation today, there is a stone tablet inscribed with scriptures. The tour guide will tell the legend of "the revenge of the fungus spirit", but little does he know that the truth is hidden deeper in the soil. Whenever night falls, Qi Tongwei can still see a faint blue light flickering under the old locust tree, but this time it is no longer resentment, but rather it seems that the land is smiling. The little fox said that this is the echo of the earth's veins, and the peace that has been exchanged for the sincerity of generations.
During the years when the Buddhist chants and the fragrance of mushrooms were intertwined, Qi Tongwei finally understood: so-called awe is not to fear the punishment of nature, but to listen to the language of the land.
This is a soil health monitor installed in the ecological restoration project. It is now projecting humidity and pH data three feet underground onto an electronic screen. Between the jumping numbers on the screen, a few rays of light and shadow like the lines of fungus folds occasionally flash by, like an ancient code left by the land in the digital torrent.
"Looking at these machines again?" Aunt Wang came over with a bowl of freshly cooked mushroom soup, her white hair fluttering in the evening breeze. Since participating in the altar ceremony, the dark green marks on the old man's neck have completely disappeared. "When we were farming, we didn't need these iron lumps." She glanced at the monitor, her tone full of awe, "But in terms of efficacy, it's really no worse than the sutras and mantras."
Qi Tongwei smiled and ran his fingertips across the waveform on the screen. After the disaster three years ago, he insisted on installing this system throughout the village, which not only monitors the soil, but also records every insect chirp and every gust of wind in the forest. The hum of the machine gradually overlapped with the evening bell from the distant Buddhist temple, weaving a strange rhythm in the twilight.
When the last rays of sunlight sank into the valley, the whole village seemed to have entered another dimension. The temperature control system of the ecological greenhouse started automatically, and white mist overflowed from the pipes, covering the growing mushrooms. These smart devices should have made mechanical sounds, but after sensing the moonlight, they adjusted to the same humming frequency as the ground vein vibration - this is the "ecological resonance mode" specially developed by the Provincial Academy of Agricultural Sciences.
Zhang Dazhu wrapped in a cotton-padded jacket inspected the greenhouse, the beam of his flashlight swept across the mushroom racks. "It's really strange," he muttered into the intercom, "Since the machine switched to this mode, the growth patterns of the mushrooms have become more regular." Qi Tongwei stood in the control room, watching the silver halo on the edge of the mushroom cap on the surveillance screen, echoing the fireflies under the old locust tree.
At three o'clock in the morning, the bell of Hanshan Temple came across the thirty-mile mountain road. This is the "Earth Harmony" project specially promoted by Qi Tongwei - the temple's electronic clock is connected to the vibration sensor of the monitoring station. Whenever the bell rings, the smart devices of the entire village will adjust the frequency synchronously. The sound waves vibrate in the mountains and forests, startling the cries of night owls, but also awakening the microorganisms sleeping in the soil.
Under the microscope in the laboratory, the technicians found amazing changes: the hyphae that had been corroded by toxins were reorganizing their structures under the influence of sound waves. "It's like someone is singing Buddhist scriptures to them." The technician pushed his glasses, and the hyphae network on the screen looked like two hands making a seal. Qi Tongwei looked out the window, and the shadows of the old locust tree swayed in the moonlight, and in a trance, it looked like a monk twisting a Buddhist bead.
But harmony always has undercurrents. Late one night, the monitoring station suddenly sounded a piercing alarm. When Qi Tongwei arrived, he found that the soil pH data fluctuated violently, and strange garbled characters popped up on the electronic screen. Even more frightening was that all the fireflies under the old locust tree went out, replaced by a few clusters of purple lights that lingered at the roots of the tree.
"It's the mining team in the back mountain." The little fox appeared at some point, its tail wagging anxiously, "The vibration from their blasting disturbed the earth veins." Qi Tongwei immediately contacted the town government, but got the reply that "all procedures are complete." He looked at the searchlight that lit up in the distance, and suddenly remembered the "angry eyes of the Vajra" in the Buddhist scriptures - the next day, he brought the entire village, holding monitoring data and soil samples, and knelt in front of the town government.
The standoff lasted for seven days. On the seventh night, the bells of Hanshan Temple sounded particularly clear. When the bells reached the mining team's camp, the hydraulic pipes of the excavator suddenly burst, and dense wild mushrooms emerged from the ore pile, with patterns similar to scriptures appearing on the mushroom caps. The mine manager was so scared that he evacuated overnight, and before leaving, he kowtowed three times in the direction of the old locust tree.