"Go to your village and fetch a basin of water, and I’ll teach you," said Xu Zii with a smile.
The child looked at Xu Zii with a puzzled glance, then scampered off into the village.
Watching the child’s retreating figure, Xu Zii smiled and shook his head.
Though he had seen it once in his previous life, he still couldn’t help being amazed at the intelligence of these children in the paintings when he saw them again.
Before long, the child returned, panting with a small basin of water.
Xu Zii placed the basin under the sun and, lining up the angle, a reflection of the sun appeared in the water.
"Shoot your arrows at this reflection, and you can hit the sun," Xu Zii pointed to the basin and said.
This bow-drawing and sun-shooting test was sowhat like a monkey trying to fish the moon out of the sea, but the difference was that while the monkey never caught the moon, you can actually hit the sun.
A few children looked at Xu Zii skeptically, then bent their bows, nocked their arrows, and fiercely shot at the reflection of the sun in the water.
When the arrows plunged into the reflection, the image in the water wasn’t disturbed and rippled slightly.
Instead, a dull thundering sound rumbled in the sky, and the sun that hung high beca like a ball of fire that seed to fall from the sky.
"The sun has fallen; we hit it," the children cheered, jumping up and down.
Xu Zii stood by with a smile; as the sun fell from the sky, the space around Xu Zii began to distort and shake again.
As the space in front of him changed, when he opened his eyes, he found himself back on the plain.
Another painting appeared before him, this one depicting several children bending their bows to shoot at the sun.
Xu Zii put away the painting and continued northward.
Initially, after shooting down the sun, the temperature around returned to normal, but as Xu Zii moved forward, he felt the air growing colder and colder.
The sun was obscured by dark clouds, and snowflakes began to drift from the sky.
The snowflakes fell heavier and heavier, the snow beneath his feet thickened, and even the temperature around beca cold.
Xu Zii, now at the pinnacle of the True Vein Realm, could still feel the cold.
It wasn’t just physical coldness, it was a deep, bone-chilling cold.
He sat cross-legged, allowing the snowflakes to scatter on him.
In a short while, his entire body was completely buried by the falling snow, turning into a snowman.
Xu Zii only felt his entire body grow numb and without any sensation.
Even all the organs in his body seed to be frozen, and his heartbeat appeared to slow down more and more.
"Am I going to die," Xu Zii wanted to smile but found that his muscles had already been frozen stiff.
He closed his eyes, his consciousness growing more and more blurred, as if a voice was constantly advising him in the darkness.
"Sleep now, after you fall asleep, it will all be over."
Although his body was already in shock and his consciousness was veering towards sleep, the stubbornness in Xu Zii’s heart still refused to end it like this.
This competition against ti and the struggle with the Grim Reaper was the most excruciating.
Xu Zii didn’t know how long it had been; he just felt that his body was completely icebound, he seed numbed to the cold, and he couldn’t even hear his own heartbeat.
Suddenly, a warm pulse began to throb in his chest, attaining enlightennt in the face of death, and then sparking the fire of a burning prairie within the endless icy expanse.
Just like the saying goes, a single spark can start a prairie fire.
Xu Zii only felt that the warmth was very faint, yet the coldness in his body was dispelled instantly.
The snowflakes in the sky seed to have stopped falling, and Xu Zii slowly opened his eyes to find that the icy and snowy landscape that was previously before him had vanished.
He found himself once again on the plain, with a painting falling down in front of him.
Snow and ice swept across the world, freezing everything, but under the cover of ice and snow, there sat a person, like a pine, sitting cross-legged on the ground.
Immovable, as if even if the snow buried the whole world, he would not be extinguished.
This was the scene depicted in the painting, and Xu Zii took the painting and continued forward.
The actual test of the third barrier was temperant, no matter how great the difficulty, even on the brink of death, one must not give up any hope.
…
Xu Zii kept moving forward, and after a while, his gaze was captured by the scene ahead.
The distant mountains seed close at hand yet were shrouded in haze, and the white clouds in the sky hung so low they appeared to be just above his head.
As if one could reach out and grasp the clouds, the blue sky, clearly day, was twinkling with stars.
Directly in front was a boundless sea, with huge waves rolling in the middle, the roaring seawater being swept up by the waves but never seeming to fall.
In the middle of the two sides of the waves, a path paved with pebbles led through a secluded lane.
The pebbles floated on the blue water, reflecting the starry sky and the clouds overhead, as well as the misty mountains behind that were just a stone’s throw away.
In the middle of the pebble path, there was an inkstone on a table, and at this mont, a middle-aged man in a green robe stood before the table, engrossed in painting.
Xu Zii stepped on the pebbles, one by one, then approached the middle-aged man.
He watched the man paint, but there was no paper on the table; the man held a wolf hair brush as though he were painting in the air.
After a while, the middle-aged man put down the brush, and the spiritual energy around suddenly fluctuated.
A fish leapt out from the space before him, darting into the sea, followed by a series of goldfish jumping out from space.
"Do you see anything?" the middle-aged man asked with a smile.
"I don’t understand," Xu Zii shook his head.
"You are quite honest," the middle-aged man laughed: "You are the first successor to co here.
According to the rules, as long as you can paint a picture with a mood, you can get my Divine Brush."
"I can’t paint," Xu Zii shook his head and said, "And I’m not here to receive your legacy of the Divine Brush."
Hearing Xu Zii’s words, the middle-aged man was taken aback, then laughed: "Then you must be here for the World Pearl, I’m sorry, the World Pearl is not part of the legacy of this Painting Palace."
"I have a painting," Xu Zii also smiled and took out the three paintings he had obtained earlier.
"These paintings can only accept the inheritance of the Divine Brush, I will not give the World Pearl to others," the middle-aged man said.
"You should take a look at this painting first," Xu Zii smiled.
Then he took out the fourth painting from his Storage Ring, the very one he had gotten from Nie Xingqing before.
It was a self-portrait of the Ancestor of Wind.
"How did this painting end up in your hands?" the middle-aged man’s expression changed slightly as he asked, "Are you her descendant?"
"That’s not important. When you painted this picture, you promised the Ancestor of Wind that as long as soone ca to you with this painting, you would fulfill any request they had," Xu Zii smiled: "Isn’t that right, Senior Wu Qing?"
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