ATEG Chapter 94.2

The Mingdeng Sect’s methods have never been secret.

As long as someone asked, people of the Mingdeng Sect would teach, without the various trials that most sects in this world required before transmitting true cultivation methods. Other sects did not lightly transmit true methods to prevent those of poor character from doing harm after obtaining them, but the Mingdeng Sect’s methods had no such concern—those of poor character simply could not light that heart lamp.

It was also because of this that although the Mingdeng Sect widely transmitted cultivation methods, those who truly chose to cultivate this method were not many, and most just learned the basics.

But although both widely transmitted cultivation methods, the lamp-lighting method Yang Cang taught to the old man and the wandering souls was different from the lamp-lighting method the blind painter Changpu taught to Liu Chuanyu.

The method Yang Cang transmitted only had the effect of reducing the resentment and suffering of wandering souls. The method Changpu transmitted had no restrictions—its effects arose according to mental thoughts and could be called strange and uncanny.

Liu Chuanyu was just a beginner, and the power of her lamp-lighting was also very weak. But what if the one lighting the lamp was not Liu Yetao, but someone who had cultivated for a long time? What effects could they achieve using this method?

Such a strange and uncanny method—how could Ding Qin and Bai Hong not be vigilant?

But after Ding Qin prayed to Li Chi, much of her tension dissipated.

“The High God said this method can only produce some weak effects. Even if Liu Chuanyu’s lamp-lighting effects doubled, that would roughly be the limit of this method,” Ding Qin told Bai Hong.

Bai Hong became curious. “Why is that?”

Most cultivation methods in the world became more powerful the more advanced the practitioner. What was special about this method?

“This method is like cultivating divine arts with wish-power,” Ding Qin said.

Bai Hong suddenly understood.

Divine path cultivators could collect the wish-power of mortals to master certain specific divine arts. For example, if mortals often prayed to a deity for satisfactory marriages, after collecting enough wish-power, that deity could refine and cultivate it into a divine art related to marriage. This was cultivating using the power of mental thoughts.

The lamp-lighting method Liu Chuanyu knew directly transformed her own mental thoughts into the power of techniques. But just like divine arts cultivated from wish-power, the stronger one wanted such divine arts to be, the more wish-power needed to be collected, and the process of refining and cultivating became more difficult and complex. 

The reason Liu Chuanyu could cultivate the lamp-lighting method so simply and quickly was also because her own mental thought power was not much, and the effects she could produce were weak—even Wumei, a snake soul without cultivation, could withstand it. If one wanted to use the power of mental thoughts to reach the degree that worried Ding Qin and Bai Hong, it was not something Liu Chuanyu’s simple lamp-lighting method could achieve.

There was no method in this world that could easily grant all wishes.

Since that was the case, they had no need to be as vigilant toward the Mingdeng Sect as before.

But they still needed to meet that blind painter.

According to Liu Chuanyu, Changpu had been searching for a person named Yang Cang in a painting, so she wouldn’t stay in one place for too long. In a few days, she would be preparing to leave. It was also because of this that Liu Chuanyu had been staying with Changpu recently instead of returning, wanting to learn more things before she left.

Coming to the street where Changpu often sold paintings, she sat under a tree with a basket beside her and a stall spread out in front. Her two eyes were open like a normal person’s. At first glance it seemed fine, but looking closely, one would discover there was no spirit in these eyes. The pupils were lighter in color than normal people’s, blending with the irises into a murky gray.

There were no customers in front of the painting stall. When she first arrived, because she was a blind painter, some people came to see the novelty. But after this period of time, people had long grown tired of looking. Moreover, in these times, how many people were willing to buy paintings?

As soon as Ding Qin and Bai Hong arrived on this street, they saw a burly man walking toward the painting stall with an aggressive manner.

Changpu had no reaction, as if she hadn’t noticed this man at all.

But how could that be possible? She had clearly been able to spot a Shijian’s soul from afar and could draw people very accurately. Even without mentioning the techniques she knew, an ordinary blind person’s hearing would necessarily be much better than ordinary people’s. When that man walked over, he didn’t deliberately conceal his footsteps. The heavy steps could even be heard by ordinary people.

Watching this big man walk over, the people around who had no interest in the painting stall all couldn’t help but look over. Their gazes seemed to already guess what was about to happen. While watching this big man, they also showed some avoidance. It seemed they knew this big man, but from their attitude, their relationship with each other was probably not very good.

“Lu Si, everyone’s having a hard time. Settle down and don’t make trouble!” Someone stuck their head out from a shop nearby and shouted at the big man.

Lu Si glared back. Though the person in the shop wasn’t afraid of Lu Si, they had no way to deal with him either, so they could only shrug slightly. But judging from the hidden worry in their gaze toward the painter, they had probably deliberately spoken up as a warning just now.

After this commotion, Changpu seemed to finally notice, tilting her head slightly in this direction, but still had no other reaction.

Lu Si walked aggressively to the painting stall, but didn’t directly overturn the stall or make trouble as everyone thought he would. He stood in front of the stall with eyes wide as an ox’s, but froze as if motionless, just standing there looking at Changpu.

Changpu remained as before, only raising her head slightly to face Lu Si. Apart from this, she made no other movements nor spoke any words.

“What’s going on?” Ding Qin quietly asked someone nearby.

That person, seeing she was a young girl, answered in a low voice. “You just came here not long ago? Lu Si is a famous bully and scoundrel around here, very troublesome. Don’t provoke him, or you won’t be able to get rid of him. That painter made a bet with this scoundrel a few days ago. This scoundrel lost and ran away without paying up. Don’t know why he’s back now—looks like he’s upset and wants to make trouble for her again.”

Over there, Changpu and Lu Si remained motionless. This person looked at them in confusion and murmured, “But what’s he trying to do today? Why is he just standing there staring?”

As soon as these words fell, Lu Si made a move.

Staring at Changpu, he said roughly, “You… that painting you drew for me before—where is it? I’ll buy it!”

When these words came out, everyone around was stunned.

A few days ago, Lu Si saw this painter was blind and also a woman alone, so he deliberately came to make trouble. He forced her to make a bet, saying without touching facial features, could she draw a portrait that looked like the person? Lu Si said if she drew it accurately, he would pay money to buy it.

As a result, that blind painter just listened to others describing Lu Si and really did draw Lu Si’s appearance, so accurate that anyone could tell it was him at a glance. But Lu Si didn’t keep his word, insisting the drawing didn’t look like him, saying the painter was blind so how could she judge whether it looked similar? He could see, so if he said it didn’t look similar, then it didn’t. Then he defaulted on the painting money and ran away directly.

Why did he suddenly want to come back to buy the painting today?

But Changpu seemed completely unsurprised, only her expression seemed somewhat helpless. “If you want to solve the problem you’ve recently encountered, buying or not buying the painting makes no difference.”

Lu Si’s eyes grew wider, shouting, “So it is related to you!”

Changpu looked even more helpless. “This is not my problem.”

“If it’s not your problem, how do you know I’ve recently encountered something?” Lu Si looked extremely angry, but he actually didn’t overturn Changpu’s stall or make any other moves, only glared at her angrily.

This statement made sense. The people around didn’t know what had happened to Lu Si these past few days and were quietly asking each other.

“Did you hear what happened to Lu Si recently?”

“No, do you know?”

“I haven’t heard either…”

Some of the murmuring fell into Lu Si’s ears. He glared around in a circle, then turned back to glare at Changpu. “You sell me the painting, and this matter is settled. Otherwise I’ll stand here every day! Let’s see who still dares to buy your paintings!”

The people around were shocked.

“What’s wrong with Lu Si?” the person next to Ding Qin murmured.

Seeing Ding Qin looking at him uncomprehendingly, that person explained. “Lu Si used to collect protection fees around here. If you didn’t pay him, he could directly overturn your stall. He’s even torn down people’s shop signs and smashed them. Now this…” He shook his head.

This was too mild compared to Lu Si before.

How could such a bully and scoundrel have such a big change in just a few days? What had he encountered?

“I can sell it to you,” Changpu said. “But the thing you encountered can’t be solved by the painting.”

As she said this, she took out a rolled painting from the stall.

Lu Si snatched the painting, opened it to look, and after confirming it was indeed the painting of himself, he carelessly rolled it up and stuffed it into his clothes. Without asking the price, he threw a small piece of broken silver onto Changpu’s stall and hurriedly left.

Ding Qin glanced at that painting from afar, and her pupils shrank slightly.

Some curious people went to ask Changpu what was going on, but Changpu only said it was just an ordinary painting. Seeing they couldn’t get anything out of her, the onlookers gradually dispersed.

Ding Qin and Bai Hong walked over. Their footsteps were both very light, but when the two were still quite a distance from the painting stall, Changpu’s ear twitched and she turned her face, her two spiritless murky gray eyes facing the two directly.

“I want to have a painting done,” Ding Qin sat down in front of the painting stall.

Changpu agreed and asked, “What would the customer like painted?”

“Paint me,” Ding Qin said.

“Then I’ll need the customer’s help to describe what you look like,” Changpu said.

“Do I describe myself, or should someone else describe me?” Ding Qin asked.

“Either is fine, but if both of you can describe, that would be even better,” Changpu said.

“Alright,” Ding Qin agreed.

She and Bai Hong each described once, just truthfully describing without deliberately making it difficult, but in their two descriptions, Ding Qin’s appearance inevitably differed slightly.

“…Face like a full moon, cheeks like a young child…” Bai Hong said.

“I’m almost of age!” Ding Qin protested.

“You’re still not grown up,” Bai Hong ruthlessly suppressed her. Compared to her age, Ding Qin could still only be considered a baby.

Bai Hong continued describing. “Anyway she looks small, round face, big eyes…”

After both finished describing, Changpu began to paint. With one hand pressing the paper and the other holding the brush, the lines she drew were smooth and soft. With just a few strokes she outlined Ding Qin’s face shape and hair—ears, mouth, nose, eyebrows all quickly drawn. Only when drawing the eyes did she slow down.

From the already drawn image, it was indeed almost no different from Ding Qin’s appearance.

She painted this well and this quickly, even faster than people without blindness. But it also made sense—Changpu was blind in both eyes and couldn’t see the image, so she didn’t need to think about how to make the next stroke or how to compose the picture. All her images, brush positions, weight, and so on were already thought out in her mind, so she didn’t need to hesitate. She only needed to let her hand follow what was in her heart.

Changpu took a bit of time to outline Ding Qin’s eye shape. This speed wasn’t slow, just slower than when she painted other parts. But when it came time to paint the pupils in the eyes, Changpu couldn’t put brush to paper for a long time.

Her brush tip hung above that blank space but couldn’t fall down no matter what. Until the ink on the brush tip was almost dry, she added ink twice more, sweat already appearing on her forehead, but still couldn’t dot it down.

A nearby vendor noticed the situation here, stretched his neck to look this way, and asked, “Did you forget where you painted to? How about I help point out the position for you?”

Changpu put down her brush, shook her head, and slowly exhaled. “I can’t paint it.”

She hadn’t forgotten the position on the image; she just couldn’t paint those eyes.

This might be incomprehensible to others. The eye shape was already painted—couldn’t you just put two ink dots in approximately the middle position to have eyeballs? Even children could do this. What was there that couldn’t be painted?

But Ding Qin didn’t press further. She just nodded and asked, “How much is this painting?”

Changpu shook her head. “I didn’t complete this painting, so how can I take money?”

“Then, can we talk?” Ding Qin said again.

Changpu looked at Ding Qin, then after a moment slowly nodded. “Alright, shall we change locations?”

She packed up her stall and brought Ding Qin and Bai Hong to a dwelling.

This was just an ordinary dwelling with no traps set up. The method of hiding desire power in the rolling red dust like hiding water in the sea or sand in the desert—once discovered, it was difficult to fool them a second time.

Changpu put away the things she brought back and invited Ding Qin and Bai Hong to sit. She looked very calm, even though she already knew Ding Qin and Bai Hong were definitely not ordinary people like Lu Si—even if she hadn’t noticed at first, when she couldn’t complete Ding Qin’s portrait, she had already realized it.

“Why did you two come looking for me?” Changpu asked.

“I want to ask a question,” Ding Qin said, a pair of clear eyes looking at Changpu, and also seeming to look at the empty space around her.

“Who is Yang Cang?”

After this name was mentioned, one of the karmic threads around Changpu suddenly trembled.

Ding Qin caught this trace of trembling, and her gaze instantly looked within it.