Chapter 386 367: From the Ordinary, To the Ordinary

She tended the fire distractedly, but her expression as she painted was one of utter concentration.

So focused, in fact, that Song Ciwan could tell at a glance. The little girl in the painting seemed unfamiliar, but in reality, it was clearly Aunt Wen herself.

It was her as a child!

[Enlightenment of a Righteous Qi Realm Painter. Value: Four jin, one tael. Exchangeable.]

Her Talent had surpassed ten feet and was still rising. Aunt Wen had gone from the initial Qi Nourishing Realm, past the Vast Qi Realm, and was now entering the Righteous Qi Realm.

She had jumped three levels in a row!

In comparison, when Wang Yi received the Celestial Spiritual Light, he only reached the Qi Nourishing Realm. When Yan Hanzhang received it, he entered the Vast Qi Realm. But Aunt Wen, upon her initial breakthrough, had gone straight to the Righteous Qi Realm!

No, perhaps it wasn't just the Righteous Qi Realm, because her Talent was still rising.

Ten feet, eleven feet, twelve feet, thirteen feet...

Aunt Wen brandished her brush and painted again, depicting herself as a child, as a youth, as a middle-aged woman, and finally, as she was now.

She painted so many "Aunt Wens." In the paintings, Aunt Wen was stoking a fire, gathering firewood, working in the fields, or washing clothes...

She swept the floor, she cooked meals, she raised children. She was cursed at, with fingers pointed in her face. She hid in corners to cry. She got up in the middle of the night to wash diapers in bone-chilling water. She fed her children while her own stomach was empty. She tossed and turned at night and forced herself to stay strong during the day...

Her family was poor, with no money to spare. Her own clothes were covered in patches, and so were her child's.

She would pick up a bowl only to see the grains of rice within clearly countable, the congee so thin you could see your reflection in it.

She went from being scolded by others to shouting right back at them.

She learned to raise her quills, to arm herself.

She went from vibrant and bright to old and haggard, her face weathered by hardship.

But no matter what she became, even with shackles on her feet and a cangue around her neck, she always reached out one hand. That hand held a Paintbrush, and from the very beginning, she never let it go!

The long scroll seemed to tell the story of half her life.

It was ordinary, marked by hardship, yet also extraordinary—even filled with romance and magnificence!

The end of the painting connected to its beginning. The weathered boat-rowing woman, now in her middle age and approaching her later years, sculled her boat with one hand and held a brush in the other, gazing from afar at the approaching Song Ciwan, who walked upon the waves.

The young woman was like a wave-walking Fairy, a white goose flying by her side.

A smile touched her eyes as she reached out and tapped lightly.

That single tap brought forth the sundering of primal chaos, the separation of the great mist, the appearance of the Sun, Moon, and Star, countless motes of Spiritual Light, and an infinite future!

A mote of Spiritual Light entered her, and her Talent reached thirty-six feet.

Aunt Wen lowered her brush. With one hand caressing the painting, she looked at Song Ciwan, her eyes brimming with hot tears.

[Enlightenment of a Righteous Qi Realm Painter. Value: Five jin, seven taels. Exchangeable.]

Her qi value had surpassed five jin!

But with her Talent at only thirty-six feet, she ultimately failed to break through the Righteous Qi Realm and enter the next stage.

Thirty-six feet was equivalent to 3.6 zhang.

To break through the Righteous Qi Realm and enter the Vast Realm, one needed a Talent of at least ten zhang.

That was an incredibly difficult threshold; the vast majority of Scholars in the world could never hope to reach such a realm.

Song Ciwan looked back at Aunt Wen without any sense of regret for her. 'Thirty-six feet today is only the beginning,' she thought. 'Her future holds infinite possibilities.'

As they looked at each other, a thousand words seemed to pass between them, yet everything was understood without speaking.

The Heaven and Earth Scale appeared again, receiving two clumps of qi in succession: [Human Desires: The gratitude, joy, and elation of a Righteous Qi Realm Painter. Value: Five jin, six taels. Exchangeable.]

[Faith in the Spiritual Nature of All Things: The devout belief of a Righteous Qi Realm Painter. Value: Three jin, six taels. Exchangeable.]

The second clump of qi was actually Aunt Wen's Wish Power and faith!

The faith of a Righteous Qi Realm Painter!

Song Ciwan hadn't expected that on top of her gratitude, Aunt Wen would suddenly develop faith in her. This was truly unexpected.

Aunt Wen caressed the painting, the brush still in her hand. Overjoyed, she asked earnestly, "Fairy, this humble one just felt a strange power enter me. Did you descend to the mortal world specifically to grant me this enlightenment?"

Song Ciwan: ...

Her mind stalled for a moment before she could process it.

'Did Aunt Wen... did she hear some storybook tale about an Immortal descending to the mortal world to enlighten a mortal and help them achieve immortality, and that's why she's asking this?'

Considering the sudden burst of the Power of Faith from Aunt Wen just now, that was likely the truth of it.

For a Righteous Qi Realm Painter who had entered the Dao through painting to have such a naive side, treating storybooks as gospel... Song Ciwan was momentarily at a loss for how to respond.

She fell silent for a moment, pondering how to answer.

After all, Aunt Wen came from a poor background. Even though she had entered the Dao through painting and could be considered a master who had formed her own school in the Painting Dao, she was still lacking in other areas of life.

Just then, several brilliant rays of light from Flying Treasures suddenly shot up from the direction of Huijiang City.

Some rode clouds, some used Wind Manipulation, and others sailed on boats as they suddenly crossed the sky, shouting from a distance, "Which grandmaster just attracted the Celestial Spiritual Light? Who has entered the Dao?"

How similar this scene was to the one that had occurred after Yan Hanzhang successfully entered the Dao!

With a commotion as great as the descent of Celestial Spiritual Light, who could possibly be fooled?

However, on Aunt Wen's end, because Song Ciwan had used the Wind Manipulation Technique to block it for a moment, the commotion from the Celestial Spiritual Light had been somewhat delayed.

As a result, the experts in Huijiang City were a bit slow to react. Only after all the Spiritual Light had finished descending on Aunt Wen's location did they rise into the sky and give chase.

In the time it takes to tell, the experts in the sky were already calling out to one another as they flew.

The leader pointed in the direction of Aunt Wen's small boat and said, "The Spiritual Light descended in that direction. Let's go!"

Aunt Wen stared blankly at the scene unfolding in the distant sky.

Her hand subconsciously tightened around the canvas. Suddenly, a strange, invisible ripple emanated from the huge canvas floating in the air inside the boat's cabin.

In an instant, the canvas shrank and fell into Aunt Wen's palm.

Finally, it transformed into a current of formless qi and drilled into her palm.

It turned out the painting, having inherited a stream of celestial Spiritual Qi, had undergone a transformation. The way it now drilled into Aunt Wen's palm was just like a Scholar's Life-bound Illusion Text. This painting had become Aunt Wen's Lifebound Spiritual Painting.

And she hadn't just acquired a Lifebound Spiritual Painting. At the same time, the tree branch in her other hand suddenly dissolved into motes of starlight, shot into her palm, and vanished without a trace.

This charred tree branch had become Aunt Wen's Lifebound Spirit Pen!

Immediately after, the figures in the sky flew over and arrived.

The group halted their Flying Treasures and looked down at the waterways below.

Below them, boats of all shapes and sizes navigated a crisscrossing network of canals.

Aunt Wen's small boat was inconspicuous among them. Although the commotion on her boat had been great, Song Ciwan's habitual concealment had prevented the people on the surrounding boats from noticing any of the strange phenomena.

Of course, while Song Ciwan could hide the activity on the boat, she couldn't hide the activity in the sky, which was why the city's experts had now arrived through the air.

Their leader was none other than the Hujiang County Magistrate!

The County Magistrate had sharp instincts; he singled out Aunt Wen's small boat from among the many vessels at a single glance.

While still in the air, the County Magistrate cupped his fist from a distance and said, "Madam, I am the Hujiang County Magistrate. Regarding the Celestial Spiritual Light just now, did you happen to see where the person it descended upon is?"

On the boat, Aunt Wen wiped her hands on her hem again and again, replying in a panicked, bewildered, yet somewhat simple-minded way, "Ah, ah, Your Excellency, this common woman saw nothing. I don't know anything..."

The County Magistrate frowned.

His Deputy Magistrate said, "Forget it, Your Honor. What could we possibly learn from this ignorant country woman? Even if she saw something, she probably wouldn't have understood it. We should go ask over there. That boat belongs to the Shuishui Gang."

At the Deputy Magistrate's suggestion, the County Magistrate agreed that it made sense.

The group immediately flew past Aunt Wen's boat and continued onward.

Sure enough, a large ship was moored about a hundred zhang away.

Once they had flown far away, Aunt Wen instantly breathed a sigh of relief. Then, she frantically began to feel around her clothes.

She was searching for the eighteen silver ingots she had tucked into her waistband earlier.

Finding the silver, Aunt Wen hurriedly offered it to Song Ciwan. As she held it out, she said, "Fairy, this humble one dare not accept this silver. Please, you should..."

She wanted Song Ciwan to take the silver back, but when she looked up, the space before her was empty.

Besides Xiaoni and herself, there was no trace of Song Ciwan on the boat.

If not for the solid weight of the silver in her hands, Aunt Wen would have suspected that her so-called "encounter with an immortal" had been nothing but a fantasy.

Song Ciwan had vanished, disappearing without a trace!