Chapter 40: Lily (Part 1)

This is how Xiaoju was sent to him and became his first confidant.

In fact, her original name was not Xiaoju, but Jinju. It was just that on the day Chai Che brought her here, the two of them were at loggerheads with each other. Mu Jin's face was extremely cold, and he wanted to kill Chai Che, and Chai Che also saw through his thoughts.

He used the excuse that the name Jinju was too vulgar, so it would be better to change it to Xiaoju, so that when he called this name in the future, he would remember to remind Mu Jin to smile.

Chai Che is also a weirdo like him. Mu Jin feels that everyone in the Governor's Office is a freak, including himself, of course.

They were wrapped in the blood of wild beasts and soaked in darkness. Even standing under the sun, he couldn't help trembling.

He was afraid, terrified. He was afraid of the secret passage he had to go through, afraid of the blood-collecting instruments, afraid of his uncle, and even more afraid of Cha Che's betrayal.

In front of Xiaoju, he didn't dare to put down his disguise, as if in these layers of buildings, if someone took off his mask and put down his disguise, he would die.

He was sealed in wax, and the food in the house was also sealed in wax, so he could not taste the deliciousness of the food. As for the wax on his body, it sealed his endless hatred.

Chai Che's swordsmanship is sharp and strange. Xiao Ju learned the swordsmanship from him, so the style is almost the same. It's a pity that her skills are not strong enough.

It's lacking some heat.

Xiaoju's arrival did not change anything. She accompanied him in his daily life, meals and drinks.

To pass the time, he asked Xiaoju to get paper and pen.

But he can't write. Normally, a ten-year-old child should have learned to read long ago, but he can't even read.

So the paper and pen can only be used for drawing.

He shouldn't have picked up the pen, and shouldn't have let Xiaoju grind ink for him.

He really didn't know much about swordsmanship, and he wasn't like Chai Che who could find good teachers everywhere, learn both civil and martial arts, and accumulate experience through battle. This also meant that in the way of the sword, he would never become an opponent who could fight Chai Che in a duel, because he was simply not qualified.

But his painting skills were a mystery. He was able to amaze Xiaoju for the first time when he painted landscapes.

Self-taught, his paintings are amazing. When he paints bamboo, his works capture both form and spirit, and live up to their integrity. When he paints clouds, he paints them freely and unrestrainedly. When he paints mountains, he paints them one after another, and with just a few strokes he can outline the majestic distant mountains.

No matter what he paints, it seems to come alive under his pen.

He was trapped in his body and flesh, but his soul traveled thousands of miles under the pen and paper.

Anyone can see that his paintings will become immortal masterpieces even after thousands of years.

The whole garden was full of eyes, but he was too young at that time and didn't know how to hide his edge.

If he were just an ordinary person, doing everything in an unremarkable or even mediocre way, perhaps he could avoid some hardships.

However, those paintings have already fallen into the hands of my uncle and his good friends.

They marveled at him and compared him with the best painters in the palace.

Mu Jin was really flattered.

This was also the first time he was acknowledged by these adults.

At night, his uncle called him over alone.

All the painting supplies he needed were placed in Qingbi Garden.

Mu Jin was stunned. He didn't understand what his uncle was going to do.

Wolf hair brushes are stiff and suitable for outlining lines, while goat hair brushes are soft and used for rendering and coloring. Pine soot ink is thick black and shiny.

At first he just painted some landscapes.

It uses azurite, malachite, cinnabar, etc., which are brightly colored and not easy to fade.

Later he painted several more flower and bird paintings.

My uncle wrote poems on each painting.

He couldn't read yet, and Chai Yu didn't want him to learn to read and write. It was enough for him to be able to draw a few pictures. To him, the smarter Mu Jin was, the more troublesome he would be.

So it’s better for him not to be able to read a single word.

The news was blocked, and all the paintings drawn by Mu Jin were signed by his uncle.

My uncle became a man of both literary and martial talents, and in his middle age he developed the talent of painting.

His paintings also became a bridge for him to make many friends. Many people came to his door just to ask him for a simple painting of mountains and rocks or peonies.

He had more and more painting tools, and one day he even had colors such as gold powder and silver powder. He didn't like using these gorgeous colors to paint landscapes, so he refused.

At this moment, my uncle placed two scrolls on the table.

Pushing one with each hand, the painting appeared before his eyes.

He had never known about this before.

No one had ever taught him that men and women could do such intimate things.

For a moment, he felt as if he had swallowed an ice-cold leech, which stung his throat and made his whole body cold.

For some reason, when he painted landscapes, he felt a sense of pride rising in his body, but when he painted this kind of thing, he couldn't help but feel fear and disgust. At that time, he didn't even know it was called a pornographic picture.

The result was that his knuckles were hit hard again, and the pain was so severe that he couldn't pick up a pen for a whole half month.

His uncle told him that a good friend of his was about to get married, and he wanted to give him a unique gift that would be useful to the newlyweds and also serve as a symbol of blessing and warding off evil.

He painted, copied the two paintings, and painted a new one.

But this was the worst picture he had ever drawn, stiff, ugly, and dark in color.

His uncle called him closer and asked him, "It's been getting a bit hot lately. Do you have any ice in your garden?"

Mu Jin shook his head, not understanding what he meant.

"Why don't I give you something that can keep you cool?"

With that, he placed the tourmaline bracelet around Mu Jin's four fingers, placing one of the beads between Mu Jin's thumb and the base of his palm. The string, made of deer tendon and golden grass, was incredibly elastic. He pulled up two beads and then lowered them high. The elastic string suddenly contracted, and two longan-seed-sized tourmaline beads struck the back of his hand simultaneously, cracking his bones.

He was tamed. If a wild beast is constantly whipped with a whip as long as an arm when it is young, it will tremble even if it grows up and is much bigger than the whip.

Failure in drawing erotic pictures for the first time also led to subsequent punishment.

However, what he heard from his uncle was the word "reward".

He had someone perform it for him in the study. To some extent, it was like a puppet show. He had never left the Governor's Mansion. If he saw a puppet show in the market one day, he would immediately understand the difference between the two.

He couldn't imagine a man and a woman being together like this.

They made noises that prevented him from concentrating on writing, and their bodies emitted a strange glow.

Perhaps Cha Che said something to his mother, but a few days later the Governor's wife, his aunt, broke into the study and drove away those men and women.

She had a big fight with Chai Yu, and Mu Jin just sat there quietly. The painting on the table was not finished yet, only part of it was painted.

When she rushed in, a drop of ink hanging on the tip of Mu Jin's pen accidentally fell on the drawing paper, staining a small piece of the paper.