Chapter 331 – Chu Danqing (2/2)

Li Qingshan picked up Chu Danqing, found an empty bedroom, and casually threw him onto the bed. Chu Danqing immediately began to snore away.

Li Qingshan said, “Still not satisfied.”

As a result, Han Qiongzhi just crossed her legs casually and sat down before Li Qingshan. She accepted the new cup Li Qingshan had passed over and drank it all. She smacked her lips. “The Apricot Blossom brew of the Ten Miles store.”

“You’ve been there before?” Just when Li Qingshan wanted to fill up her cup, she had already grabbed the jar for herself.

“Tsk. What alcohol haven’t I tried in the Parlour of Clouds and Rain?”

This group of young masters and young ladies all fooled around in a location of prosperity in Clear River city, a place of indulgence, the Parlour of Clouds and Rain. They basically indulged in their senses however they could.

Li Qingshan glanced at her. “Actually, I like women too.”

Han Qiongzhi was halfway through drinking, but suddenly, she was unable to drink anymore. These thoughts that rarely appeared in her head, like a man and women being alone, or men and women maintaining their distances from one another, suddenly emerged, and her face flushed slightly from drinking. She feigned anger. “If you want to drink, then drink. What’re you saying so much for?”

Yet for some reason, she wanted him to continue, to see what other nonsense he could spout. She was a forgiving and tolerant person, so she would not rebuke him too much either.

Li Qingshan instead felt that Han Qiongzhi was very right. If he wanted to drink, then he was supposed to drink. What was he saying all of this for? Was he supposed to copy Chu Danqing and yell out that he wanted women too?

His gaze landed on the pile of paintings. Although he would still have to return them to him once he woke up, surely it would be fine if he used this opportunity to study them, right?

He picked up a smaller painting from the stack. It depicted a life-like oriole. Li Qingshan remembered the method of using the Cursive Sword Calligraphy, so he tried channeling true qi into it.

As if he had set off a profound mechanism, the oriole suddenly began to move. It flapped its wings and let out a clear cry, immediately breaking free from the painting. It flew around Li Qingshan a few times before vanishing into the bamboo forest.

“Um, it flew away.” Li Qingshan stared at the blank piece of paper in his hands in a daze. Suddenly, he vanished, and a few seconds later, he returned to where he was before, holding a struggling oriole in his hand. He contemplated on how he was supposed to shove it back into the painting.

Han Qiongzhi’s attention was drawn over by this strange sight too. She also used this opportunity to dismiss her random, awkward thoughts. She picked up a painting.

They had almost finished drinking, but Han Qiongzhi became more energetic the more she drank, giving Li Qingshan no opportunity to take advantage of her, which was a slight pity.

He had basically finished studying the paintings now. At the very least, he found out how to return the paintings to their previous state so that he could give them back to Chu Danqing. Suddenly, Li Qingshan raised his head and smiled strangely. “He’s fled!”

Chu Danqing jerked awake. When he thought of his behaviour when he was drunk, he felt troubled and uneasy. He was tempted to throw himself at a wall.

He had not just never really drank. Rather, this was the first time he had drunk in his entire life. During the days he had spent on the streets, he could only drool outside liquor stores, while in the mountains, his master never drank.

He regretted that his childhood had been brought up, which made him rather tempted to make up for everything he had missed out, only to humiliate himself so much. He regretted even more that he had forgotten about the vileness of human nature and the difficulties of life from just ten years in the mountains.

He heard Li Qingshan and Han Qiongzhi’s voices at the front of the courtyard. He directly left through the window, taking off and fleeing from Cloudwisp island.

He did not even want his paintings back. Fortunately, he still had a hint of sobriety about him, so he had only taken out unimportant practice pieces. It would not matter even if he gave them to that wretched Li Qingshan. Otherwise, it really would be too late for regret.

Then these paintings are mine! Li Qingshan stowed the stack of paintings away. He had already come up with a plan. He knew what he was going to write.

In the world, no one was more naive than children. When adults read novels, perhaps they could become enthralled for a moment, but at the end of the day, they knew it was all just fictitious. However, children could believe that it was true, believing in the existence of these unbelievable things.

In the past, the monster that the founding ancestor of the school of Novels had seen specially targeted children too.

Li Qingshan obviously could not harm children, but he knew there was something called fairy tales among the various types of novels that existed. From those tiny believers, the power of belief that their pure minds could provide could probably rival that of ten adults.

Fairy tales were terse and powerful. It would be much easier to propagate them than most other novels.

However, the number of fairy tales that existed was also as boundless as an ocean, which made it rather difficult for Li Qingshan to choose. Western fairy tales would probably struggle to take off due to the conflicting culture and customs, so which eastern fairy tale was he supposed to tell? The King of Fats? It was simple and interesting, which was beneficial for propagation. It was powerful and practical too, like how he could destroy an entire mountain from a fart…

However, if he were supposed to summon a character like that in the eye of the public, lifting up his bare bottom to… Even with how thick-skinned Li Qingshan was, he felt his face heat up.

Only when he encountered Chu Danqing and saw his paintings did he think of an extremely famous character. He stood alongside the Black Cat Detective and the Calabash Brothers4 as the three great childhood role models, and his ability just happened to be the same as the school of Painting.

And, these paintings would soon prove his existence.

PS: I want a monthly ticket! Ah, three people, give me three monthly tickets!

1. Li Bai, or Li Taibai, is an ancient Chinese poet of great renown, known for his poems and his fondness of drinking. His poems are so great that they’re still studied to this day, and younger children of Chinese descent are often forced to memorise them (I too suffered this fate ;-;)

2. Goudan’er is an extremely unsophisticated name often given to children in the countryside. A literal translation would be dog balls or dog testicles. In ancient China, children were frequently given unsophisticated and vulgar names in hopes that they will live longer. They believed that the worse a child’s name was, the hardier they would be and the more likely they would survive to a greater age; this was due to the high infant mortality rate. This comes from local beliefs that when the judges of the dead come to collect souls (basically people die when their souls are collected), they don’t think it’s a name befitting of a human, so they skip the person.

3. Danqing can mean vermillion and black, or it can mean Chinese painting, as vermillion and black are frequently used in Chinese painting. I’ve attached an example:

4. The Black Cat Detective and the Calabash brothers are among the most popular earlyChinese animations. I too grew up with a picture book of the Black Cat Detective. You can read more about them here: