Chapter 593 — The Old Scholar Whose Verse Presses Down the Star River

"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.

Behind him his primal spirit rose into being and, brush in hand, painted alongside him, pouring out its heart's blood, writing out a vast and magnificent composition, the very look of rivers and mountains.

Beside them, Shen Mu, Bashan the Libationer, Granny Zhu, and the rest all stared, dumbstruck.

They had never once imagined that the Deaf Elder — always grave of face, honest and simple — could have such a side: so free of restraint, so willful, so wild and unfettered.

With magma for ink and the earth for paper, in no long time he had covered scores of acres of ground with molten fire; the painting on that ground, wrapped in the blaze, shone so golden that it stung the eyes.

Who could have thought that in the heart of a mere old scholar there burned such full-throated, sweeping passion?

The Deaf Elder painted on without pause. He painted heaven and earth, heaven left blank, earth green; he painted wind and cloud, thunder and lightning; he painted towering mountains and rivers; he painted god after god and demon after demon, each with its own bearing, no two alike; he painted endless armies, grim and murderous, charging, those sinews and muscles like forged steel, hideous, their blades keen and bright.

He painted out a battlefield, and countless lithe figures leaping; at a single glance Shen Mu and the others felt that the gods and demons in the painting, the armies there, would leap right out of it!

The explosive power in those muscles, those figures slashing down with their blades, the lightning and thunder about to burst from the clouds, the torrential rain about to break, the howling hurricane, the ravaging tornado, the collapsing mountains, the boiling sea — how real, how utterly real it all was!

The Deaf Elder was painting a vast and magnificent world, and making that world come true!

The Butcher's song had made his inspiration burst, stirred his feelings to the depths, roused the heroic ardor and the creative power in his breast; he was wholly sunk in this mad creation, speaking straight from the heart, giving free rein to the visions within him.

After no one knew how long, the Blind Elder said in desperate alarm, "The demon army is almost here! A hundred li away!"

The Deaf Elder turned a deaf ear and painted on.

The Blind Elder frowned. "Eighty li!"

Shen Mu raised his head and looked toward the eighty li. There the murky demonic aura came rushing toward them like black fog; the array-patterns in his eyes opened layer upon layer, and his heart lurched. Among the mountains, countless gigantic monsters were surging like a tide over peak after peak, racing the whole way, brandishing all manner of uncanny weapons, mouths gaping as they bellowed and charged.

They were barely clothed, their garments ragged and torn — not like the demon clans of Luofu Heaven, but rather like refugees in flight.

They were enormous of body, running as though flying, and shaped monstrously, as if pieced together from different living things; their muscles and organs were crooked and deformed, far, far more terrible than the demon clans.

Some were covered with the heads of every race, their arms made of countless arms twisted together; some were all white bone, monsters grown out of skeletons; some had faces crowded with eyes great and small; some had legs and feet beyond counting, like centipedes.

Their weapons too were utterly primitive: great bone clubs with flesh still on them. Bloodlust glittered in their eyes, and as they ran they destroyed everything.

"These are no demon clans. These are monsters from Youdu!"

Shen Mu forced down the shock in his heart. These were deformed monsters born when wandering souls of Youdu absorbed its demonic aura and its demonic nature!

Youdu was not wholly Tubo's domain. He had once traveled there; though not for long, he had seen enough to know that Tubo set little store by power.

What Tubo cared about most was the rules. The rules of Youdu.

So long as the rules of Youdu were not broken, he seldom interfered of his own accord in the beings that lived there.

These Youdu monsters were the fruit of Tubo's indifference.