Nightfall

Successor of the Divine Talisman Master

Translator: TransN  Editor: TransN

The tall and thin Taoist dipped his finger in wine and continued to write on the rosewood table. Very soon, he had copied all the twenty-nine characters on the note. He sucked his finger and put his hands down. He lowered himself to take a closer look at the table, carefully scanning over the pieces of paper in the account book.

His eyebrows became more tightly knitted as he continued. He shook his head more and more frequently with even more confusion. “What kind of writing style is this? I’ve never seen it before. There’s no fluctuation in the primordial Qi, so why would it be found in abundance here? The characters are obviously messy, but why do I feel a tightness in my mind when I trace them with my concentration?”

Shaking his head, he stood up and straightened his body. He paced inside the room before quickly returning to the rosewood table, examining the characters on the paper. His eyebrows remained tightly knotted. He shook his head and mumbled repeatedly, “Blocked! It’s all blocked! Not blocked? No!”

Regardless of how much conflict there was between the three main cultivating factions or countries, no one had ever dared to show disrespect to the Divine Talisman Masters. In this world, cultivators were rare, and such masters rarer still. They sat at the crossroad of worldly literature and art and cultivation. With a rise and drop of their brush, they could command gusts and startle the supernatural. They were too important to cultivation and warfare and considered to nearly non-renewable resources. Thus, they were always treated with the utmost respect.

Though the Tang Empire was the most powerful nation in its time, yet possessed not more than 10 Divine Talisman Masters. Most of those masters had long removed themselves from the secular world, choosing to seclude themselves in the Academy or the wooden mountains to pursue Taoism, devoting themselves to exploring the secret of the law of nature. This left few masters in the earthly world. Out of the four masters from the South School of Haotian Talisman, two were envoys that the West-Hill Divine Palace sent to Chang’an to demonstrate its power and influence. Thus, they weren’t permanent residents of Chang’an. In that sense, that meant there were only two Divine Talisman Masters from the South School of Haotian Taoism left.

The man visiting the House of Red Sleeves tonight was one of the two.

He was called Yan Se, the second brother of the Master of the Tang Empire, Li Qingfeng. He was the Minister of Offerings in the South School of Haotian Taoism. He favored strong wine, beautiful women, and clever calligraphy. His talisman art made him one of the most extraordinary masters in the world. In the torrential downpour that night, it was his marvelous trick to draw a talisman out of the rainwater in the alley and frightened the self-proclaimed cultivation genius of the Tang Empire, Wang Jinglue, into a crying little fat child.

Besides various Martial Arts of Talisman, Divine Talisman Masters were commended for their ingenious state and writing skill. It was said that a great calligrapher or painter couldn’t become a Divine Talisman Master without a cultivation potential, but all Divine Talisman Masters were famous calligraphers or painters crowned with eternal glory in their own right.

Yan Se was a Divine Talisman Master who indulged in brothels but he was someone who could be the top calligraphy master in the world if he wanted to. Yet his attention was captivated by the messy script on the paper torn from an account book. He still couldn’t find a solution after racking his brains, only repeating the word, “Blocked.” If the other calligraphers and powerful cultivators found out, they would be shocked speechless. They would also gain an interest in Ning Que, whose script had puzzled a Divine Talisman Master. Just who on earth was he?

The messy script with 29 characters had put Yan Se, the great Divine Talisman Master, into a state of confusion. Yet it wasn’t because Ning Que was capable. For various reasons, his mental state had somehow perfectly corresponded with his style of writing at that point in time.