Chapter 593 — The Old Scholar Whose Verse Presses Down the Star River
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
"Agreed!" Granny Zhu and the others said with one voice.
The Deaf Elder reached down into the abyss of Wuwang City. His magic power surged forth, and a column of molten rock burst up into the sky.
He seized his great brush, took the magma for ink and the earth for paper, and painted, the brush running like dragons and snakes across the ground.
The hairs of that brush were the tail-tip hairs of a fire wolf that had cultivated to the realm of communion with the gods; its shaft was a divine bone taken from a ruin in the Desolate Wastes. Shen Mu had often played with it as a child, and had always got his palm rapped for it.
Such fire-wolf hair could bathe in fierce flame without harm, and the divine bone could release magic power without stint, writing out words in full-throated, unbridled delight.
The Deaf Elder had always been mild and refined, even a little pedantic. When he had money he was magnificent, like a prince far above the world amusing himself among mortals; but when he had none he was shabby and destitute, squatting at a street corner selling his paintings without daring to raise even a single cry to hawk them.
And now, as he gripped his brush, its tip turned in an instant wild and unbridled, and the whole man turned in an instant wild and unbridled, possessed of that bold, soaring spirit that belongs to a scholar alone when he waves his hand and calls the world to order, that madness, that abandon, his and his alone!
"Deaf Elder, let me lend you a hand!"
Seeing the tip of his brush, the wandering strokes, the painting blazing in the flames, the Butcher felt a surge of heroic ardor; he swept his blade and leveled the ground, so that the Deaf Elder might paint to his heart's content.
He made a pillar of primal energy, and holding it, stirred the magma in the air so that it would not freeze to stone, and chanted in a long voice: "His brush goes dragon-snake, his words pour down the River of Stars. In his fair youth, virtue and art he brought to perfection both! Before the imperial court he laid his memorials, and the emperor's own hand lifted him above the brilliant host. The dragon's head — who would not seize it? And yet, for all of that, his merit and his deeds stand jagged and steep. How much more for him — a fame as vast as a heaven-poured flood! I remember where I once bowed in worship: the Tiantu of those years, the Wuwang City of today. I sigh over white hair and a scholar's blue gown, come once more to a guest's gate. Reverently I bring one scroll of verse and prose, trusting the immortal wind to blow it to Peng and Ying! To the land where I would return — there to burn incense, to pluck the bright and lovely, and be an old scholar!" [Note 1]
His poetic feeling burst out in a flood; the song held a heroic savor all its own, telling the whole road of the Deaf Elder's life — from crown prince of Tiantu, his skill and art surpassing all the host, the fragrance of his writing filling the world, to the ruin of his country and his house, poverty and failure, living by selling paintings — so that one could not help but feel both stirred and exalted, and at the same time the bleak sorrow of old age grieving over white hair.
"Aba!"
The Silent Artisan raised his thumb. A thunderous roar sounded in his cinnabar field, as though a great sun burned there; the iron furnace behind him erupted like a volcano, and roaring fire poured into the magma.
The flames blazed high. The Butcher used his primal energy as a pestle, stirring the magma; the firelight lit his face and his chest and baked them red.
The Deaf Elder laughed aloud, as though drunk on wine, giving himself up ever more freely, his steps staggering, his great brush roaming with ever less constraint — like a dragon, like a snake, like a phoenix in flight, like a dragonfly touching water, like a young swallow learning to fly, like an old ox at the plow.