101 Successor of the Divine Talisman Master (1/2)
Chapter 101: Successor of the Divine Talisman Master
Translator: TransnEditor: Transn
The tall and thin Taoist dipped his finger in wine and continued to write on the rosewood table. Very soon, he had copied all the twenty-nine characters on the note. He sucked his finger and put his hands down. He lowered himself to take a closer look at the table, carefully scanning over the pieces of paper in the account book.
His eyebrows became more tightly knitted as he continued. He shook his head more and more frequently with even more confusion. ”What kind of writing style is this? I've never seen it before. There's no fluctuation in the primordial Qi, so why would it be found in abundance here? The characters are obviously messy, but why do I feel a tightness in my mind when I trace them with my concentration?”
Shaking his head, he stood up and straightened his body. He paced inside the room before quickly returning to the rosewood table, examining the characters on the paper. His eyebrows remained tightly knotted. He shook his head and mumbled repeatedly, ”Blocked! It's all blocked! Not blocked? No!”
Regardless of how much conflict there was between the three main cultivating factions or countries, no one had ever dared to show disrespect to the Divine Talisman Masters. In this world, cultivators were rare, and such masters rarer still. They sat at the crossroad of worldly literature and art and cultivation. With a rise and drop of their brush, they could command gusts and startle the supernatural. They were too important to cultivation and warfare and considered to nearly non-renewable resources. Thus, they were always treated with the utmost respect.
Though the Tang Empire was the most powerful nation in its time, yet possessed not more than 10 Divine Talisman Masters. Most of those masters had long removed themselves from the secular world, choosing to seclude themselves in the Academy or the wooden mountains to pursue Taoism, devoting themselves to exploring the secret of the law of nature. This left few masters in the earthly world. Out of the four masters from the South School of Haotian Talisman, two were envoys that the West-Hill Divine Palace sent to Chang'an to demonstrate its power and influence. Thus, they weren't permanent residents of Chang'an. In that sense, that meant there were only two Divine Talisman Masters from the South School of Haotian Taoism left.
The man visiting the House of Red Sleeves tonight was one of the two.
He was called Yan Se, the second brother of the Master of the Tang Empire, Li Qingfeng. He was the Minister of Offerings in the South School of Haotian Taoism. He favored strong wine, beautiful women, and clever calligraphy. His talisman art made him one of the most extraordinary masters in the world. In the torrential downpour that night, it was his marvelous trick to draw a talisman out of the rainwater in the alley and frightened the self-proclaimed cultivation genius of the Tang Empire, Wang Jinglue, into a crying little fat child.
Besides various Martial Arts of Talisman, Divine Talisman Masters were commended for their ingenious state and writing skill. It was said that a great calligrapher or painter couldn't become a Divine Talisman Master without a cultivation potential, but all Divine Talisman Masters were famous calligraphers or painters crowned with eternal glory in their own right.
Yan Se was a Divine Talisman Master who indulged in brothels but he was someone who could be the top calligraphy master in the world if he wanted to. Yet his attention was captivated by the messy script on the paper torn from an account book. He still couldn't find a solution after racking his brains, only repeating the word, ”Blocked.” If the other calligraphers and powerful cultivators found out, they would be shocked speechless. They would also gain an interest in Ning Que, whose script had puzzled a Divine Talisman Master. Just who on earth was he?
The messy script with 29 characters had put Yan Se, the great Divine Talisman Master, into a state of confusion. Yet it wasn't because Ning Que was capable. For various reasons, his mental state had somehow perfectly corresponded with his style of writing at that point in time.
The books in the old library had inspired him today, so what he had done was remember the form yet neglect the meaning. Driven by such exultance, he visited the brothel with his classmates to drink like a fish. In a drunken stupor, he randomly picked up the brush and composed those words hastily. The inspiration he had received allowed him to dispel all the strict restrictions of penmanship. His drunkenness helped him subconsciously flout the rules of the strokes. Twisting plum blossoms and pushing down the grape trellis, he was driven by his tipsiness to frantically and excessively drag his brush, in hopes of precisely creating an illegible script.
His writing style had opened up a new path, using a clumsy and awkward path to wedge a different and concealed cultivating path. A talented calligrapher in Chang'an might not have found it unique, but in the eyes of this Divine Talisman Master, it seemed as if the calligraphy had caused an itch in him. Perhaps it was an itch that hadn't been scratched for the past 60 years, something that itched to the core of his bones.
Yan Se's comments about Ning Que's calligraphy being 'blocked' was correct. Ning Que was born 'blocked' - obstructed by the rules of cultivation. All of his acupoints in Snow Mountain and Ocean of Qi remained closed off. He was now seeking a longer, winding path to reach the top, yet there existed boulders at the end of the path as well. How could he pass?
The meaning between lines referred to the fact that each stroke in the middle and the one thereafter illustrated the mental state and the thought of the writer on the spot. Every single word in this messy script was illogical. That was because the real meaning was buried in fuzzy ink and became unclear. Yan Se's copy managed to uncover the feeling imprisoned in the strokes, no matter how powerful the shackle was. That feeling permeated into the rosewood table through the wine and suffused the House of Red Sleeves with the flavor of wine...
When Ning Que wrote the note for Sangsang, he was still at his height of drunkenness. He apparently wanted to convey that he wanted to stay in the House of Red Sleeves, yet his true feeling was revealed when the hidden meaning was diffused. He himself didn't know of this feeling. Perhaps he was unwilling to admit it.
In the courtyard with a couple of plum trees located in the west, Lu Xue was sunk into silence as she held her bamboo flute. Her delicate face was haggard, her expression deeply sorrowful. She stared at the long withered old plums at the far end of the courtyard, longing for the spring in her hometown in the south.