Chapter 1033 — Looking Back on a Former Spring, Like a Dream

God King Langwan was startled. After a moment's hesitation she said, "Langwan is one million and fifty thousand years old this year. May I ask how old Granny is?"

Granny Zhu was given a fright. To the Deaf Elder she said, "You entertain this little sister Langwan. I am going to find Shen'er and have a word!"

The Deaf Elder turned a deaf ear, and went on tracing God King Langwan with his brush in the air, still unable to set down a stroke. The woman was too beautiful; once put to paper, however one painted her, her spirit and charm would all too easily be lost. After a long while the Deaf Elder sighed, rolled up his brush, ink, paper, and inkstone, and left.

God King Langwan blinked and thought, "The Holy Infant's family are all so very odd."

The Deaf Elder sought out Granny Zhu, only to find her holding Shen Mu by the ear and scolding him soundly. Shen Mu answered meekly, not daring to talk back, while the Alchemist, gathering herbs nearby in his bronze mask, watched them with open amusement and made no move to intervene.

"I cannot paint her."

The Deaf Elder said out of nowhere, "I can paint a beauty like Granny Zhu. I can paint every thing in the world. But this God King Langwan, and her alone, I cannot paint."

Shen Mu, still covering his ear, asked curiously, "Deaf Grandpa, Granny's looks are no less than God King Langwan's. You can paint Granny, so why can you not paint God King Langwan?"

The Deaf Elder took his hand. "Come with me."

The two came before God King Langwan, each set out a desk, laid out brush, ink, paper, and inkstone, and each took up a brush and loaded it full of ink. Granny Zhu and the Alchemist followed, to watch how the two painting sages would lay down their strokes. God King Langwan grew still more curious, and sat quietly watching them.

Shen Mu and the Deaf Elder studied the beauty before them closely, each lost in thought. Shen Mu was just about to set his brush down when he felt that for the brush to touch the paper would be to defile her; the stroke would not come. The Deaf Elder was the same. That two painting sages should hold their brushes yet be unable to touch ink made Granny Zhu and the Alchemist click their tongues in wonder.

"Now do you have your answer as to why I can paint Granny Zhu but not God King Langwan?"

The Deaf Elder heaved a long sigh, flung his brush to the ground, and said, "Granny Zhu is a human being. Even if she has cultivated to the divine realm, even if her looks are so exquisite that no words or verses can describe them, one can still fathom her spirit and charm. But this woman you brought back—she is not human. There is not a trace of human flavor about her. She carries only pure divinity, pure godhood and no emotion at all. That is why I cannot capture her spirit and charm, and cannot set down a stroke. Alchemist, take off your mask."

Hearing this, the Alchemist was briefly taken aback, but he removed the bronze mask covering his face. The Deaf Elder looked at God King Langwan; God King Langwan looked at the Alchemist. The Deaf Elder shook his head. "Even a man so handsome that the whole world adores him cannot stir a shred of human feeling in this God King. I still cannot paint."

Shen Mu set down his brush and looked into God King Langwan's utterly limpid eyes, and a sense of loss came over him. God King Langwan gave him a serene smile; Shen Mu smiled back, and all at once felt a sense of release.

The woman whom even the Painting Sage of the Heavenly Chart could not put to paper was, after all, not the same kind of being as he. Ever since he had met God King Langwan he had been bewitched by her beauty, yet it had never once occurred to him that such a goddess had no worldly feelings in her heart. He had taken Yun Chuxiu for a creature of creation, a beauty fashioned after God King Langwan's likeness; but with the Deaf Elder's prompting he suddenly realized that God King Langwan had no mortal feelings at all, none of the seven emotions and six desires. Beside her, Yun Chuxiu, shaped by Madam Yuanmu, seemed much more like a clever, quirky human girl; though a creature of creation, she had a human temperament. God King Langwan, by contrast, was a goddess enthroned on high, her heart untouched by the dust of the mortal world. She had only divinity, and no humanity.

He need only quietly admire her beauty.

He set down the desire in his heart. Looking again at God King Langwan, he could at last treat her with an ordinary mind.

"With my hands I crush the red apricots, drunk on their heavy fragrance; looking back, the spring gone by was but a dream."

Shen Mu set his brush to the paper, his heart utterly clear and empty, and painted the beauty before him stroke by stroke. The Deaf Elder was astonished, and watched closely at his side. The beauty Shen Mu painted could not match the true God King Langwan's looks, yet the girl in the painting seemed a living human being—mischief in her eyes, shyness at the corners of her mouth, her gaze like autumn water and brimming with feeling. The Deaf Elder raised his head and looked at the woman opposite, and thought, "What Shen'er has painted is the beloved in his heart, not her."

Stirred in his heart, he emptied his mind, picked up his brush, and began to paint as well. He painted God King Langwan's divinity with divinity.