Chapter 331 – Chu Danqing (1/2)

Don’t tell me there’s some kind of defensive formation here!

As Chu Danqing thought that, he walked along the small cobblestone path. A thick layer of snow covered it, with another layer of bamboo leaves on top. No one had cleaned it up.

The bamboo forest was primarily green, but there was also yellow too, standing tall and reaching towards the skies. It obviously turned into an array of colours in his eyes. There was light green, verdant green, light yellow, gamboge, pale yellow, and so on. The dazzling array of colours flattened out, turning into a delicate painting of realism.

He shook his head violently to shake away these thoughts. He had spent an entire decade learning painting deep within the mountains, such that it had almost driven him crazy. Sigh, the outside world is still better!

The senior sister from the school of Medicine diagonally across from him earlier was so pretty. His master often said that there were great beauties within paintings, and he also possessed the ability to make these beauties emerge from paintings, but living beauty was different from that of paintings. This was the aspect he differed from his master the most. His master said these were all just distractions, but he still preferred them more.

“It’s you?” Li Qingshan saw Chu Danqing look around as he walked over.

“It’s me. I’ve come to check out the future territory of our school of Painting!” Chu Danqing raised his chest. Chu Shidao had told him to come and investigate Li Qingshan—know yourself and know your enemy, and you will never be defeated. However, he was still unsure about how he would approach this.

“Do you drink?” Li Qingshan was not sitting before a table seriously and working on his masterpiece. Instead, he sat in the corridor, leaning against a wall. He held a jade cup in one hand with jars of alcohol around him.

Although he had already confirmed the direction that he wanted to write in, he still felt troubled when it came to actually writing. He paced around the room a few times before suddenly remembering how he had yet to drink the hundred jars of fine alcohol from Sun Fubai!

Wanting to emulate the story of how Li Bai1 could string together a hundred poems from just a peck of alcohol, he took it out and drank a few cups alone. Although it was all fine alcohol, it was lacking in flavour.

Even Li Taibai had to raise his cup to toast to the moon and his shadow so that the three could “drink together.” As such, it really was quite difficult for him to drink alone. Li Qingshan thought long and hard. Xiao An was currently making preparations for the assembly of dharma. Milliped was hibernating, while Hua Chengzan was in secluded cultivation. Han Tieyi was probably too busy with the matters of the school of the Military too, unable to make any spare time to drink with him.

Chu Danqing was stunned at first. He was unable to say everything he had thought of beforehand. He never really drank. Painters were not poets, so they could not spend all their time in a drunken stupor. Only with a clear mind could he paint with a clear vision and steady strokes.

Smelling the fragrance of the alcohol, he could not help but gulp.

A small, clear stream flowed out from the alcohol jar, entering two jade cups.

Chu Danqing, originally called Goudan’er2. Twenty-one years of age. Due to his delicate babyface, he seemed very young.

As he begged on the streets in his youth, he was discovered by Chu Shidao in his hometown. He possessed a special bloodline known as the Jade Blood of Vermillion and Black, which was why he was called Danqing3, and he took on his master’s surname. When he was eleven, he was taken into the mountains to learn painting from his master. He had only emerged a month ago. He had come to investigate Li Qingshan.

Over a dozen jars of alcohol in, before Li Qingshan had even said anything to him, he came clean with everything. He wrapped his arm around Li Qingshan’s neck and spouted exactly what he was thinking.

“I want a woman!” Chu Danqing called out. His voice resounded through the bamboo forest, and he then proceeded to laugh idiotically.

Li Qingshan sighed and shook his head. Look at what all that smothering had done to such a good child!

“You’re drunk.”

“I’m not drunk. Drink, let’s keep drinking!”

“You can’t keep drinking.”

“Why can’t I keep drinking? I- I have money!” Chu Danqing rummaged through his hundred treasures pouch for quite a while, but sure enough, he did not find a single piece of silver. Without thinking any further, he pulled out a stack of paintings. “I’ll pay with paintings!”

As a result, Li Qingshan received a pile of ready-made specimens that he could use to understand the abilities of painters.

“You!” There was a cry, and Han Qiongzhi arrived before the bamboo loft.

Hua Chengzan was gone, so as the secondary disciple of the school of Legalism, she had been piled high with work. However, when she heard how Li Qingshan would be battling someone, she still managed to make some time and come take a look. However, she was met with a delicate young man basically in Li Qingshan’s arms, even trying to feed Li Qingshan alcohol. She immediately felt like she had been struck by lightning. So it turned out he leaned in that direction. No wonder he could treat her so indifferently.

Then she thought about something Hua Chengzan had said to her before he had entered seclusion, “If I still don’t get myself together, someone might end up cutting me off.” Has little Hua fallen for his schemes too? This Li Qingshan is up to absolutely no good. Little Hua has only just entered seclusion, and he has already found someone new. Sigh, what am I thinking!?

“Don’t misunderstand! He likes women!” Li Qingshan could tell what Han Qiongzhi was thinking with a single glance, so he rectified in a hurry. However, never did he imagine that Han Qiongzhi’s thoughts had already reached such a complicated level in just a single moment.

After he said that, Chu Danqing saw three Han Qiongzhis too. He raised his cup. “Ah, three beauties. Come drink!”

“Like I said!” Li Qingsahn shrugged.

“Where’d this drunkard come from? Huh? The tenth layer?”

Only after listening to Li Qingshan’s explanations did she learn that the person right before her was Li Qingshan’s future opponent. She really had no idea whether she should be happy for him or not. His opponent had come to investigate him, but from just a few jars of alcohol, he had said everything on his mind, even giving Li Qingshan a pile of paintings.

For example, great sir Li’s opponents had always been either a genius like Chu Tian or seven hundred valiant soldiers from the school of the Military. He had even faced an opponent like Altar Lord Black Lotus before and emerged unscathed. Now that he was supposed to fight someone like him, she really had no idea on what to say…

“Don’t underestimate him. The paintings from him can defeat regular tenth layer Qi Practitioners.” Drunkenness did turn people boastful, but Li Qingshan believed that these were not drunken boasts. The “Jade Blood of Vermillion and Black” definitely were not empty words.

In a single decade, he had gone from being a young beggar to a tenth layer Qi Practitioner. He was so talented that he was no less of a prodigy than Chu Tian. Painters could channel their painstaking efforts and spiritual energy into paintings, such that they could summon everything in the paintings when they needed to. They had a similar ability to novelists.

However, there was no need for them to gather the power of belief. As long as they had sufficient time, they could create an entire army. With how vast the world was, able people and outstanding talents really did appear one after another. None of them could be underestimated.

Han Qiongzhi studied Chu Danqing closely and struggled to see even a hint of a genius from this drunkard. Even Chu Tian had some pride and arrogance about him!