Volume One: A Free and Unfettered Journey Among the Leaves of Deception Chapter Eighty-Nine: The Sword Within the Painting

After a long silence, Yang Ning carefully wrapped the long flute in black silk once more and put it back into the drawer of the dressing table. Only then did he go to a room across the way.

He had assumed there would be at least a few things in this chamber, but once inside, he found it utterly empty. In one corner sat only a wooden board, with a heap of dry straw carelessly piled beside it.

When he went over to look more closely, he discovered that two writing brushes and an inkstone had also been left in the corner. The ink within had long since dried and congealed; when he picked it up, it was nothing more than the plainest of inkstones, and the inkstick inside had hardened like stone.

This puzzled him. He thought to himself that a woman had once lived here; could these brushes, ink, and inkstone also have been left behind by her?

As his gaze moved about the room, he suddenly noticed a yellowed sheet of paper on the floor. He picked it up and glanced at it. The sheet was badly damaged, but it seemed to bear some kind of picture. Because it was so incomplete, he could not make out what had been drawn. Just as he was wondering, he noticed that beneath the pile of straw another half-sheet appeared to be sticking out. He swept the straw aside and found many papers scattered in disarray beneath it.

Yang Ning picked up one relatively intact sheet and stepped to the window, where he held it up to the moonlight for a closer look. Sure enough, it depicted a little figure.

The drawing itself was not especially skillful, but it was clear enough to see that the figure in the picture seemed to be holding a long sword, angled upward, while both legs were slightly bent in a rather peculiar stance.

Yang Ning was greatly astonished. He thought to himself: could the woman who once lived in this courtyard have known swordsmanship?

This picture was plainly a most unusual sword form.

He turned abruptly, went back, and moved the entire heap of straw aside, then gathered up all the papers scattered on the floor. When added together, there were forty or fifty sheets, a thick stack indeed.

More than ten of them were already torn and damaged, but most remained fairly intact, though old and yellowed. Yang Ning held the stack of papers and went outside, sitting on the threshold by the door. He was not worried about being seen. The people in the old residence treated this courtyard like a haunted place; no one dared approach it, much less climb over the wall in the middle of the night.

He flipped through the sheets one by one, and indeed they were all sword forms.

The little figures on the pages were drawn very casually, merely outlining the limbs and body, and even the long sword in the hand was only a thin line. Yet the postures of the sword techniques themselves were rendered with surprising vividness.

Apart from a few that were more or less normal, most of the figures were bizarre beyond measure. Some lay on the ground, some crouched, some sprang or leaped, and the changes in the sword forms themselves were equally strange.

Before his transmigration, Yang Ning had practiced not only bare-handed combat, but also the use of weapons. Though he had never handled a long sword like this, he had used staffs and cudgels before. Both were long weapons, and although the techniques differed considerably, there were still many points in common.

But many of the forms in these drawings went beyond anything he knew.

He even felt that some of them could not possibly be performed at all, as though they entirely defied the natural laws of bodily movement. One such move showed the right hand holding the sword, while the right arm was raised above the head, and the long sword had somehow swept behind the back, slanting down toward the left hip. The pose looked utterly awkward. In any normal sword art, such a nonsensical maneuver simply could not exist, and in Yang Ning’s view, it seemed as though it would be unable to inflict any harm on an enemy at all.

Then he suddenly thought of a category of swordsmanship not meant for injuring foes, but for performance. In many noble households, there were often numerous dancing girls kept in residence. Though many dances were meant to display feminine grace, some were decidedly unusual, and sword dance was one of them.

Such dances embodied strength and sharpness within feminine softness; with sword and dance combined, with hardness and gentleness balancing one another, they possessed a distinctive beauty of their own.

But after all, sword dance was created for dance alone. Its concern was only with the peculiarity and beauty of the movements, not with practical use.

Seeing these strange sword forms, and recalling that the room had once been occupied by a woman, Yang Ning immediately thought these drawings might be a set of sword dances. Perhaps the woman had been lonely and bored in this place, and in her spare time had drawn out the entire sequence.

After considering it, he casually picked up a wooden stick from the courtyard and imitated the first movement: lifting his right hand high overhead, then drawing the stick from above his head around to his back, angling the tip toward his left hip. As soon as he tried it, he felt how awkward and unnatural it was. Let alone performing it with ease, merely getting into position took some effort.

Once he had struck the pose, Yang Ning felt like a fool. Shaking his head with a wry smile, he thought that since he was a grown man, if this truly was a sword dance, it must have been intended for women. A woman’s flexibility might render such a posture exquisite, but no matter what, he himself could not bring out any sense of beauty in it.

He dropped the stick, sat down again, and looked through a few more sheets. Then he suddenly frowned, sensing something amiss.

Judging from the brushwork, the strokes were forceful; although the drawings were very casual sketches, the lines still conveyed a sense of free and unrestrained spirit.

Yang Ning could not help frowning.

He knew that men’s and women’s handwriting differed greatly. Women’s brushwork was usually delicate and careful, and the force behind it tended to be softer. Yet these sword-form drawings were full of an airy, unrestrained quality and a sense of power, and the strokes were heavy. A brush was unlike the steel pens of later times; its bristles were a soft thing. Without strong inner force and the ability to exert power smoothly, even the slightest pressure would distort the line.

Though these drawings were loose and expressive, they did not go out of shape. The more Yang Ning looked, the more he felt they resembled a man’s hand. That was strange. Could a man once have lived in this courtyard too?

Since Gu Qinghan had said a woman had once lived here, one thing was certain: the former owner of this courtyard had to have been a woman. Even if there had been attendants here, they could only have been maids and serving women. It was absolutely impossible for a man to have served in this place. So what relation would such a man have had to the mistress of the courtyard?

Lost in thought, he continued turning the pages, and after a short while a flash of inspiration struck him. Within the stack of drawings, he actually found a pattern.

Among these dozens of sheets, seven or eight showed a figure lying on the ground, and five or six showed one crouching. The sword form with the long sword slanting behind the body that he had seen earlier was not unique to a single sheet; another drawing was quite similar to it. In that one too, the right hand was raised above the head, but the long sword did not sweep behind the skull. Instead, it angled toward the front left, while the left hand stood upright with the palm vertical, pressed near the forehead.

After a moment’s thought, he sorted the dozens of sheets into categories. The ones with the figure lying down were all placed together, and those with similar sword forms were grouped together as well. After some time spent organizing them, he had divided them into six piles.

His instincts told him these sword forms were bizarre beyond measure and could not be as simple as sword dance. There was probably some hidden mystery within them.

Though some of the sheets were damaged, Yang Ning did his best to restore them, and where restoration was impossible, he could only judge by the remaining traces.

After dividing them into six piles, Yang Ning saw that the sheets showing the figure lying on the ground were the most complete, with no missing portions. He carefully examined those eight pages.

While sorting them, he had already noticed that the sword forms on these eight sheets clearly had a sequence before and after, forming a single set. But there were no numbers on the pages, and nothing indicating which drawing was the starting stance.

As he thought and arranged them, he tried to determine the order of the eight sheets. The easiest one to identify as the first was the page showing the figure lying on the ground, right hand holding the sword, the blade tip slightly raised, with very little movement. It was easy to judge that this was the opening stance.

Yang Ning had practiced combat, and one thing he understood very clearly was that in a set of techniques, the very first move of the opening stance was sometimes the most important. Only if the opening move was correct could the rest of the sequence be performed properly. If an error occurred from the beginning, then the second move would naturally be off as well, and the mistake would continue all the way through.

After confirming the first move, Yang Ning found the arrangement of the following moves somewhat difficult, because each one was exceedingly strange. None of the sequences were the sort of sword forms an ordinary person would imagine; among them was one where the left leg was slightly lifted, and the long sword actually passed beneath the leg, slanting upward at an odd angle. The posture was bizarre to the extreme.

He wanted to find a connection between the drawings, as though one move naturally flowed into the next. But the only common feature among the eight reclining forms was that the body was lying down. If one wanted to find a link in the technique itself, it was terribly difficult.

Yang Ning ran to pick up the stick again and lay down on the steps before the door. First, he grasped the stick according to the opening stance and raised it slightly. Then, thinking of the movements in the other seven drawings, he mulled them over and over, yet no move could be naturally strung together in that way. He closed his eyes and sat in quiet stillness. After the better part of an afternoon had passed, he suddenly lifted his arm, turned his wrist to the left, and before the stick could touch his body, flicked it sharply downward. The whole motion curved like a crescent hook.

He opened his eyes and slightly raised his head to inspect his own movement. The long staff in his hand was now almost level with his right leg, deviating by only a slight angle. He hurriedly sat up to look at the drawing, and saw that one of the sheets showed precisely the movement he had just made, though on the page the long sword was perfectly parallel to the right leg.

Though there was a slight difference, Yang Ning still felt quite excited. He thought to himself that after pondering for so long, he had finally worked out a transition between two moves. He did not know whether it was correct or not, but at least he had made the attempt. This kind of transition seemed simple, but unless one truly delved into it and considered how hand and blade could best align, it might not be possible to perform at all.

In truth, Yang Ning did not yet know whether these drawings had any real value, or whether someone had merely sketched these odd positions to relieve boredom. Even the person who drew them might not have been able to perform them. And yet he also thought that this courtyard was itself strange and mysterious, full from the outset of an air of enigma. These yellowed and aged sheets had clearly been here for a long time. Since they had remained in the room all this while, perhaps there was truly something hidden within them after all.

He had previously obtained the Sixfold Divine Art by chance from Lord Wood Spirit, and later gained the Free Step from the skull. Both had come to him unexpectedly. The Sixfold Divine Art aside, the Free Step was wondrous and profound. Since he had repeatedly been fortunate before, if these drawings were indeed a sword art and he cast them aside and missed them now, that would be a tremendous pity.