Chapter 1033 — Looking Back on a Former Spring, Like a Dream
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 4 of 4
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.