Chapter 418 — Peerless in Brush and Ink
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
In those days Zai Fu was a madman — domineering, invincible, lonely — and brimming with learning besides, not the coarse brute he is now. He was as good with the blade as he was with books; the poems he wrote were bold and unbridled, and he himself became one of the great talents of his day.
His blade art was called the Heaven Blade, and so was he. Every one of his moves was rich with poetry, an outpouring straight from the heart, free and utterly exhilarating.
If Yincan Village were ever to hold a contest of literary talent, the Deaf Elder would rank first and he second; for all that he had gone raving mad and could not open his mouth without cursing, he had been the most celebrated man of letters of his age.
By then he had challenged nearly every master alive; even Ban Gongcuo, that Great Venerable of the Loulan Golden Palace, could only hide meekly inside the Golden Palace and dared not show his head.
He was full of ambition and satisfaction; apart from having one troublesome disciple, his life was already complete. Of course, that disciple was no small matter either — his name was Ba Shan, and men called him the Tyrant Blade.
Forty years, fifty years — wind and rain in darkness, and never a second meeting. Clouds pass before the eye; crosswise and lengthwise, a boundless sliver of sky.
Boast not: after the hero's calamity comes the people's wish. Gaze round on sea and sky — all the road walked, all the road in smoke.
Zai Fu created the Crosswise and Lengthwise, a Boundless Sliver of Sky, and by him the school of combat arts was carried to a height never known before. In those days many in the martial world studied the blade; the school of combat arts became the mainstream, overshadowing spellcraft and the divine arts of the sword.
It was then that Zai Fu could no longer hold himself back, and raised his blade against the heavens. He was not a man of Imperial Preceptor Jingping's stamp: what the Imperial Preceptor sought was reform and change, while what Zai Fu sought was simply a good, clean thrill.
"After I created that move, I tried it out at once. That one cut sliced the sky open."
Zai Fu danced his blade, and the art he performed was precisely the Crosswise and Lengthwise, a Boundless Sliver of Sky; he put no power into it at all, merely running through the move once.
He sheathed the blade and stood, his face strange; he steadied himself, as though recalling his own mad years: "And then I saw a bizarre sight — the sky had split open, and beyond the sky there were no stars. I was very cautious; I did not go up at once to look, but sought out several like-minded friends, all of them masters of the arts of calculation."
Shen Mu's heart stirred slightly. Zai Fu, cautious? He had always had the most explosive of tempers; when something came up he would simply put his head down and charge, swinging his blade.
"That temper was only a false front Grandpa Tu deliberately put up. Anyone who believed him a reckless brute is probably dead by now," Shen Mu thought.
"So I drew my blade a second time and cut at the sky, while my friends of calculation measured its thickness and its height. But this time something went wrong."
Zai Fu fell silent; after a moment he said bleakly, "Those friends of mine died. In the crack I had cut in the sky there appeared an eye — a huge eye, a monstrous eye. When that eye looked over, I felt my soul shudder, as though it would be dragged out of my body; but my flesh was exceedingly strong, and the beating of my heart pressed my primordial spirit down. My friends could not press theirs down. They..."
The corner of his eye twitched, and he fell silent again.
"I did not immediately charge up into the sky to seek the owner of that eye. I carried my friends' bodies to their homes, settled their families, and buried them with all honor."