“Since there is a long way to go, I’ll try again.” Instead of feeling discouraged, Ding Hao laughed and was full of confidence.
Ding Hao waved his sword and blade again. He was like a dancing dragon. The snow splashed with the sounds of wind. Both of his hands were waving in the air and he drew marks in the snow with his sword and blade.
“A little better now, but they’re still not ‘lines’.” The Sword Master harshly evaluated him.
Ding Hao smiled slightly. “Then I’ll continue.”
He was extremely calm and was not anxious at all. He was thinking while drawing. The way he waved his sword and blade was not rapidly, but rather slowly as if he was carving on the surface of iron.
“Swish! Swish! Swish!”
A series of light sounds were heard on the snowfield.
The Sword Master said, “It’s better now, but it is still not good enough.”
Ding Hao answered, “Then I’ll keep doing it…”
…
“It can be better…”
“Continue!”
…
“That was close.”
“OK, I’ll try again.”
…
“That was very close now.”
“All right, come on.”
…
“Well, it’s very good now, but it’s not perfect.”
“Again!”
…
The same evaluations and answers were repeated on this windy and sunny snowfield.
The Sword Master who made the evaluations seemed to have become a nitpicky examiner, and Ding Hao had always performed without arrogance. Even though his work was rejected so many times, he was always wearing a smile on his face and calmly waving his sword and blade. He appeared to have been completely immersed in the magical world composed of simple strokes, such as horizontal, right-falling, vertical, left-falling, hook, turning, bending, arcing, and dot.
Time passed by slowly and quickly.
Ding Hao gradually entered a state of deep meditation with no distracting thoughts.
He forgot the wind in his ears, forgot the snow around him, forgot where he was, forgot the Saber Master and the Sword Master in his mind, forgot the sword and blade in his hands, and even forgot himself… The only thing in his mind was the monotonous strokes, and the world in front of him became a blank white paper that he could paint on at will!
He wrote and carved as much as he liked. He had forgotten the passage of time.
“Hey, Sword Master, I think that’s OK. Don’t be so mean to him. I feel that the lines that Little Chap Ding has carved were very skilled though they were not perfect. They were good enough to carry out ‘Grammar’.” The Saber Master complained when she saw how tough the Sword Master had been on Ding Hao.
“You have long hair, but you’re short on wisdom. You know nothing,” the Sword Master refuted with great disdain. “Those lines are just some simple strokes, but they contain the Ultimacy of the Dao. People know that the inscription has thousands of Magic Skills and has the world’s most mysterious power, but its foundation lay on these simplest lines. They are like the bricks of a building, the elements of power. They are the most fundamental things. Only when having a perfect foundation can a person achieve perfect magical power. Today, I am tough on Little Chap Ding, but in the future, when the inscriptions of his sword and blade reach to the Advanced Level, he will be grateful to me.”
“You…” The Saber Master was very angry for being scolded, but she knew that the words the Sword Master said were right. They not only applied to the inscriptions, but also applied to martial arts, elixir skill, and the skill of refining weapons. She wanted to refute his words, but she could not find a reason.
The Sword Master felt very happy when he saw that the Saber Master was silent. He said, “Speaking of this, you should not accommodate Little Chap Ding. You’d better urge him to practice elixirs. You know, a strict teacher produces outstanding students. Hahahaha!”
The Saber Master finally couldn’t stand it anymore. She shouted angrily, “Shut up! Motherf*****r, Old Mama has my way to teach him and it’s none of your business. Let’s ride a donkey while reading: go and see. Let’s see whether his skills of saber technique and elixir are stronger than his skills of sword technique, craftsmanship, and inscription.”
“Well, well, crazy woman, you’re provoking me. Good, we’ll see.” The Sword Master was rather confident in his own way.
The Saber Master still wanted to say something, but she suddenly noticed the state of Ding Hao and was shocked.
At this time, the Sword Master also noticed Ding Hao’s abnormality and stopped talking.
…
“Lone smoke rises up straight in the great desert; setting sun disappears as a circle above the long river.”
The rusted sword flashed with a red light in Ding Hao’s right hand as he wrote down this famous sentence that came down through the ages in his previous world, and he wrote with the strokes of regular script, a chirography of Chinese characters from his previous world. Every stroke was nice and vigorous and forceful. In the eyes of the Saber Master and the Sword Master, they were full of the indescribable breath of the Dao.
“The pretty Se has 50 strings with no reason, and every string and every column of it represent the wonderful ages of life!” [Note: Se, a 25-stringed plucked instrument. Under every string, there is a column to tune the string. Its function is similar to that of the columns on Guzheng, another Chinese plucked instrument. Why does the Se here have 50 strings? The translator thinks 50 strings mean the age of the author, who was expressing his mood about life.]
In Ding Hao’s left hand was his Dragon-shaped Blood Saber. He waved the saber rapidly and wrote down two well-known sentences of one famous piece of poetry of Li Shangyin, a famous poet from Ding Hao’s previous world. It was also written in Chinese characters, but they were in a wild cursive hand (in Chinese calligraphy). The writing was elegant like a dragon and flowing like the wind. It seemed that they were going to fly from the snow and into the sky.
The superposition of the souls of the two worlds made Ding Hao fully capable of doing two different things at the same time. With his sword in his right hand and his saber in his left hand, he simultaneously wrote these famous words that spread throughout the ages on Earth.
Those words were not what Ding Hao deliberately wrote, they happened extremely accidentally.
It was very boring to continuously carve on this vast expansive snowfield those most simple lines. For a whole day, Ding Hao had been constantly drawing with his weapons. The place that he had carved on was already three square kilometers. He had been completely immersed in this repeated process. With the deepening of his understanding of those lines, he became quieter.
After thoroughly reaching the state of “forgetting himself”, the second that some thoughts hit him, Ding Hao unwittingly wrote down these four ancient poems in the form of Chinese characters of Earth.
The words on this Land of Infinity were highly developed and systematic, but they were completely different from the Chinese characters on Earth.
These four ancient poems were a sudden inspiration to Ding Hao and he did not realize what they meant, but for the Saber Master and the Sword Master, they were like thunder rolling over their heads. They seemed to have seen something incredible.
The next moment, something incredible happened—
“Boom! Boom! Boom!”
As soon as Ding Hao carved the last word, all of a sudden, there were 24 explosions. The 24 Chinese characters carved in the snow burst immediately. The snow was everywhere and wisps of power that was almost as strong as a full blow of a one-apertured Martial Disciple spread across the 24 snow pits.
