Chapter 96 (1/2)

After he had calmed down gradually, Ning Que began to zone out looking at the words on the paper. He wondered who had left behind such comments. Who was resolving his doubts? Who was helping him behind the scenes? Why was the person doing so?

He turned to look at the eastern windows. The female instructor was still writing her lowercase script and had not noticed him at all. Ning Que looked at her figure and thought about the words on the paper that disrespected women. He shook his head subconsciously. The female professor could not have written foul language like that.

Could it be the instructor downstairs? Ning Que furrowed his brows in thought, but shook his head eventually. While that instructor was humorous, he was still a rule abiding man. If he had wanted to give him some pointers, he would do so directly and not through such methods such as leaving a message.

Ning Que could not think of who would leave a message even as he mused over it. He looked out of the window vexedly and listened to the male insects singing in the gra.s.s. He grinned in self-deprecation. He thought, the person who had left the message must be an old instructor who had yet to attain cultivation. Oh, how angry would Situ Yilan and the others be should they see the message!

The person who had left the message had compared the art of reading to one's att.i.tude towards women. While it was downright obscene, it was also easy to understand. If not, Ning Que would not be able to feel that he might have understood something. To him, the message leaver had intentionally used this method to counsel him. After all, it is said that the road to cultivation is filled with self-contamination. He had the utmost respect for this person and he thought that this person must be a genius in the art of cultivation.

Since he had confirmed this person was a genius in cultivation, Ning Que's att.i.tude turned towards being serious. He held up the

Primary exploration on Ocean of Qi and Mountain of Snow

and the sheet of paper and walked towards the end of the bookshelf. He sat at the spot where the sunlight hit, calmed himself and started re-reading the message.

Chen Pipi had obviously underestimated Ning Que's comprehension abilities. Ning Que could understand what he was trying to say with just the first few lines about the objective truths and understanding confusion even though he didn't write the last two paragraphs. He didn't talk about the extreme att.i.tudes of women.

”Don't try to understand. Don't think about it. Just look at the words… Is this what the divine talisman masters intended when they copied the books? So what I have to do is to look at the words and not think about what they mean.”

Ning Que looked at the book on his knees and thought about it for a long time. He had wasted a lot of energy trying to read the books here these days. He knew the impact these words had on his psyche. After comparing the methods, he realised that it was worth it to give the message leaver's method a try.

To just look at a word or character that you're already familiar with and have memorized but to intentionally not think about it or to pretend to know what it means, or to even really forget what it means were all difficult tasks.

It was like a situation where you had to say that you'd never seen the large Chinese Scholar Tree that you'd spent your childhood hanging around with in the gardens. Or that you didn't even know that it was a Chinese Scholar Tree. You had to forget all those years of playing under it, or the first kiss that you gave beneath it. Who could do something like that?

Ning Que did not open the book but stared at the paper, perturbed. Meanwhile, his thoughts had flown out of the window and to another place, thinking about how he could look at the words while ignoring the meaning.

To forget the words that we know… who could do that?

The rays of the sun landed on his tightly furrowed brows from the west windows, making it glimmer. Suddenly, the ends of his brows rose and a flicker of light pa.s.sed in his eyes. He remembered the first word he learnt when he first started learning calligraphy years ago. He remembered writing the words many times with calligraphy brushes and with twigs.

It was the character for ”Yong”.

Those who had undergone normal calligraphy training would always remember this character. Teacher w.a.n.g Xizhi, the most vigorous calligrapher in the Eastern Jin year of the other world had thought that the character for ”yong” encompa.s.sed the eight laws of calligraphy. Each dot and stroke had it's own meaning and the eight strokes in ”yong” made up the eight laws.

Ning Que's eyes got progressively brighter. The character can be taken apart and put back again together, but it could be rea.s.sembled into any other character in the world. He could just use the eight laws of ”Yong” to read. Didn't that mean that he could read every word as ”Yong”?

He was aware that this was not an intelligent method, but a stupid one. n.o.body knew if it would work, but he could not suppress the desire and impulse in his heart. He took a deep breath and opened the book to the first page without hesitation.

”The heavens and earth breathe to rest…”