Nightfall
chapter-96

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 grass. 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 attitude 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 attitude 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 attitudes 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 passed 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 Wang Xizhi, the most vigorous calligrapher in the Eastern Jin year of the other world had thought that the character for “yong” encompassed 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 reassembled 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. Nobody 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…”

Ning Que stared at the first character in the first sentence for “The”. To be more exact, he was not seeing the entire character, but the first stroke of it. The flat long stroke was like a sharp knife slicing through his dark mental scape, tearing through it, allowing a thin slice of white light to shine through the miniscule crack.

He then looked at the second stroke, and the third. The character on the page appeared behind his eyes and into his brain, yet it did not form a complete meaning.

He could see the word, but was only allowed to see the strokes and not the entire character in his brain. It sounded simple, but was difficult and not something normal people could achieve.

It was lucky that Ning Que had practiced calligraphy tirelessly for almost twenty years. Deconstructing characters was an innate skill to him. Every calligrapher had to be able to reconstruct characters in order to write every character well. He was now forcefully cutting off the last and most important part of calligraphy in his brain. Should his mind attempt to reconstruct those characters, the character for “Yong” will make itself useful. He will think of the word as “Yong” automatically and not part of the character for “The”!

It was difficult, even for him, to think of fiction as reality. At this point of time, he has gathered all his energy. The hands holding the book was shaking slightly. The back of his school robes was damp with sweat. His eyelashes were fluttering wildly while his lips were pursed tightly, just like the first time he attempted calligraphy as a child.

The words no longer blurred and shook his mind up violently as they entered his eyes today. Instead, they presented themselves clearly in his sight and were quietly tamed like a leaf floating upon a still lake.

Ning Que had forgotten how these words had tortured him, but was looking at the strokes in silence. He looked at the various strokes that made up the character and felt as if he could see through the surface of the lake accompanied by a gentle breeze. The leaves were floating towards the east, towards the west, to somewhere far away or close to him.

There were no strong winds and waves nor thunderstorms. Neither were there a pack of wolves gathering on the grasslands. He basked in the warm afternoon sun, eyes lightly hooded as he sat on the floors at the shelves. His hands were no longer shaking and his taut body and pursed lips loosened. He did not faint nor vomit. All was calm.

The beginning of a breeze and the end of one was always gentle. Outside, the insects sang their happy song once more, celebrating the blissful spring day, celebrating the curious world before their eyes. The gentle spring breeze enveloped their songs and brought them with it into the windows, into the building and onto the lad within. It fluttered his robes, like an unseen power rushing over him.

The wind flushed around the front of his school robes, turning back as it flitted onto a certain part of his chest like the spring breeze dancing upon the slight waves of the lake. Pushing the leaves on the surface towards all different directions, they eventually touched the stone ends of the lake before turning back. It could neither reach the shore nor tear away from it.

The female instructor at the eastern window seemed to have felt something. Her brows gathered and she tilted her face upwards, listening to the songs of the insects outside and the movements of the spring breeze. She turned to the lad at the western windows and smiled gently.

To rest…

Ning Que looked at the character for rest and was distracted for a moment. His gaze left the book subconsciously and the entire character floated in his face, into his eyes. There was a splash, like a naughty child shepherd throwing a rock into the lake, causing the water to well up, shaking the leaves. There was a buzz in his mind before he was startled back into consciousness.

While he had experienced this many times, the character for “rest” had made a large impact on his mindscape. He harrumphed discontentedly and lifted himself off the floor with his right hand. He turned his pale face away forcefully, not daring to look at any character on the book.

Even so, there was a smile that cannot be suppressed on his pale white face. He knew that he’d seen the doorway. While the message leaver had not intended to open the door, at least he had not fainted after opening it. He also had a niggling feeling that should he continue reading using this method, it’d be beneficial to his art of calligraphy, no matter whether he could catch a glimpse of the wonders of cultivation.

He was in no hurry to stand up, but sat cross legged under the rays of the sun. He closed his eyes and reflected on the feeling he had previously, searching for the strokes in the depths of his mind, the scattered leaves on the lake.

He did not know how much time had passed. He opened his eyes and grinned before walking to the writing desk at the western windows. He held up a brush and a new sheet of paper. Giving it some thought, he began to pen a reply to the person who had left him a message.

He thanked the person sincerely before writing his solution and questions, hoping that the person would give him some pointers. Lastly, he asked rather earnestly, “Reading while thinking profoundly is like watching leaves on a lake floating. Is this the intention of the divine talisman master who wrote this? The leaves floated erratically, but seemed to follow a set of rules. I feel it in the Ocean of Qi…”

“Could… could this be psyche power?”