Chapter 395 - 213: Painting the Heart

Chapter 395: Chapter 213: Painting the Heart

"Brother Zheng, wake up! Even if this Little Monk is foolish and dull, I can still tell right from wrong! If even you don’t believe their love was real, then they truly died in vain!"

The man, his collar gripped by the Monk, stared blankly before slowly bowing his head.

The Monk forcefully wiped the tears and snot from his face. Having cried and cursed his fill, he felt a little calmer. He rubbed his bald head and looked at the dejected man on the ground, his lips trembling, momentarily at a loss for words.

The two were silent for a long time. Then, Little Feng Miao meowed again.

The Monk glanced at Little Feng Miao, put his palms together, and sighed:

"A Human has three ’births’ in their life: the first at the time of their birth, the second upon reaching adulthood, and the third when they are immortalized in the annals of history. A Human also has three ’deaths’: the first when their heart stops beating, the second when they are reviled and condemned by all, and the third when they are completely forgotten by the world."

Hearing this, the man jerked his bowed head up, his disbelieving eyes staring intently at the Monk from between the strands of his hair.

The Monk gave a faint smile, tear tracks still visible on his face. "These are words that ’Sister’ once told me. Brother Zheng, whether that person was Xie Luohe or Feng Bei, she was still her. If even you forget her, then she will be truly dead."

The man shuddered.

The Monk rubbed his bald head again. "You’ve seen what this Little Monk has experienced these past years. This Little Monk suffered the torment of a Heart Demon, living in a daze for many years. Brother Zheng, have you ever considered that the one who appeared before you, from beginning to end, was not the Xie Luohe who truly existed two hundred years ago, but rather, Miss Feng who had developed a ’Xie Luohe Heart Demon’?"

The man was stunned. A moment later, his face was streaked with tears.

「The next day.」

The bright sun shone, washing away the gloom.

In the courtyard, the Monk carefully washed the man’s body, trimmed his hair, shaved his beard, and dressed him in new robes. With the army pay he had saved over the years, he bought a horse-drawn carriage. He lifted the man onto his back, settled him inside, and with a shout to the horse, the carriage swayed as it departed the small town.

Inside the carriage, the man’s black hair was streaked with white, looking like a full head of silver from a distance. The Monk had combed and tied up his silver hair neatly, making him look refreshed and radiant. However, his gaunt face and sunken eyes showed that his handsome looks of the past were gone.

"Brother, where are we going?"

The Monk asked cheerfully once they were out of the city. He was happy that his brother was finally moving past his despair.

"Home," the man said impassively from inside the carriage, his lips pressed into a thin line as he pointed the way.

The journey was bumpy. The two traveled together, with the Monk taking care of the daily needs of the man with the broken legs. They headed east, and three months later, as the weather grew warm, they arrived at the East Sea Shore. There lay a valley, fragrant with flowers and birdsong, shrouded in a gentle mist through which one could faintly glimpse pavilions and arched roofs. Rumor in the town outside the valley said that a family of Hidden Masters had once lived there, but they had since fallen into decline, and their home now lay desolate.

Following a small path, the carriage stopped. The Monk carried the man on his back and walked up the mountain. A large manor sat on the mountainside. Its entrance was deserted, its walls covered in moss, and its wooden doors were spotted with mildew. Two lifelike bronze lions were embedded in the doors, their mouths holding door knockers that were coated in a thick layer of green patina and riddled with rust.

The Monk stepped forward and pulled on a knocker. CRACK. It broke off. Helpless, the Monk glanced back at the man. Little Feng Miao, perched on his shoulder, seemed to find this amusing and chuffed softly.

"It’s fine. Let’s go in."

The outside of the manor was untended, but the courtyard within had piles of fallen leaves, clearly indicating someone was living there. The Monk called out a few times, and soon, a white-haired old woman emerged from the inner hall. She squinted at the two of them and began to say, "The Gongsun Family stopped receiving guests ten years ago. If you’re looking for..."

But when she got a clear look at the middle-aged man on the Monk’s back, her squinting eyes flew open. "Young... Young Master?"

Everything about "the Gongsun Family" was just a foreign memory to the man; he had never truly lived here. Yet, as the old woman wept and hugged his broken legs, an inexplicable sense of nostalgia washed over him. In that moment, he became Gongsun Mo, the long-lost son who had finally returned home.

A short while later, the man was in the ancestral hall, lighting incense for each of his ancestors. The "people" from his memories were all neatly arranged there, reduced to cold, memorial tablets.

The old woman was Gongsun Mo’s wet nurse. She had cared for both him and his father for many years. Now, her hair was white and her back was bent with age. So much had changed.

"In the Gongsun Family, no one can escape the fate of not living past fifty." Turning away from the ancestral tablets, the man said to the elderly Mei Niang, "Mei Niang, it’s been hard on you all these years."

The old woman wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes and grinned. "It’s nothing, as long as the Young Master is back. As long as you’re home! If the Old Master knew, he would be overjoyed. It’s you who’s suffered all these years, Young Master... Your legs, alas!"

"They’re just a pair of useless legs. Fortunately, I still have my hands." The man then asked, "Mei Niang, do you happen to know why, back then, both my grandfather and my father repeatedly warned that the descendants of the Gongsun Family must never paint people?"

The old woman shook her head. "Young Master, I don’t understand such things. But back when I used to grind ink for the Old Master, he would mutter some strange words that I still remember clearly to this day."

"The Old Master said, ’You can paint the bone and you can paint the skin, but it’s hard to paint the heart. If it doesn’t look right no matter how you look at it, it’s better not to paint it at all.’"

"He said that when you paint a person, you can’t just paint their likeness. You have to paint their soul, to capture their spirit. He said it was simple, yet not simple; difficult, yet not difficult!"

"Back then, I heard the Old Master say this and thought it was strange, so I mustered the courage to ask him about it."

As if recalling the Old Master’s dashing presence in his youth, a long-absent blush appeared on the old woman’s face.

"The Old Master said that to paint a person, you have to paint their ’heart.’ But in trying to paint a person’s ’heart,’ it’s very easy to put your own ’heart’ into it."