ghost trick painting
The sound of the geisha's wooden clogs rang out again in unison, perfectly synchronized, as they practiced their movements, their postures exquisite.
Sometimes it flutters like a swallow, sometimes it turns like a butterfly.
A-Qiu didn't consider herself stupid. She had learned the art of stabbing at Lanling Hall, where she practiced the coordination of her hands, eyes, body, techniques, and steps, as well as the continuous hooking, kicking, advancing, and retreating movements. However, after following the movements of this Yanle dance, she was already struggling and feeling dizzy.
Although she didn't fall, her movements and posture were far from the basic level of a maiko.
Instructor Sun's wife has always been extremely discerning. Seeing A Qiu's abrupt movements among the crowd, her brows furrowed into a deep frown.
After one rehearsal, A-Qiu felt cold sweat soaking through her dance costume, as if thorns were pricking her back.
She finally understood why the stewards and dancers present at the music bureau looked at each other with strange expressions when Huang Lezheng invited her to join the dance troupe.
As everyone knows, every posture of a dancer is the result of countless hours of practice and cannot be mastered in just six months or three months.
While other musical instruments also require years of immersion and cannot be mastered overnight, making a fool of oneself in dance is an extremely embarrassing thing, happening in front of a large audience.
Mr. Nan Guo, a charlatan, may have managed to fool everyone for years with his shoddy performance, but a dancer's haphazard movements are obvious to anyone with eyes.
Sun's wife's expression changed several times before she finally stopped them and said to A Qiu, "Step forward."
A Qiu staggered out of the line, but his expression remained one of smiling.
No matter how awkward or embarrassing the situation, she would remind herself to smile. As the old saying goes, "One doesn't hit a smiling face," which is one reason. Secondly, a smile is the best mask for an attacker.
Sun's wife's gaze swept over her several times, but unexpectedly, she did not scold her.
This young girl clearly had no dance background, yet she was assigned to the dance troupe. Sun Neiren, a former member of the Music Bureau, was well aware of the intricacies of the situation and knew perfectly well that someone had manipulated things behind the scenes.
She had no intention of protecting anyone, nor did she intend to deliberately oppose anyone. But in the world of music, only those with real talent could discuss other matters.
Sun's wife called out, "Zhang Exu."
A tall and slender girl with delicate features stepped forward and said, "Yes, sir!"
Sun's wife said, "You should teach her body-strengthening techniques such as bending over and kicking separately."
She also called out, "Cui Luzhu."
A short, plump but graceful young woman stepped forward and said with a smile, "I will obey your orders."
Lady Sun nodded and said, "Teach her breathing exercises, lifting and sinking techniques, and other qi cultivation methods."
When A-Qiu glanced at them out of the corner of her eye, she felt that the only way to distinguish the two was by their height. This was because all the dancers here wore heavy makeup, with two dark, arched eyebrows on their snow-white oval faces, and red lips painted with rouge. At a glance, they all looked as if they were wearing identical powdered masks.
Both girls were top-ranking geishas. They glanced at A-Qiu, their strange makeup revealing helpless smiles, and agreed in unison.
Lady Sun looked at A Qiu again and said calmly, "You can't just coast along in the dance troupe. I'll give you a month. If you can't keep up with everyone else, you'll have to leave the palace."
He added, "Remember to put on your makeup before practicing your skills in the future."
Two girls, one tall and one short, escorted A-Qiu to the water pavilion across the street.
“That way, there won’t be any more thumping noises,” Cui Luzhu said with a smile.
A Qiu looked at the wooden clogs on her feet. It turned out that they had brought her here because they were afraid that she would wander around the Echoing Clogs Corridor and disrupt everyone's rhythm.
Without saying a word, Zhang Exu took out a box of snow-white face powder from her bosom and began to apply it to A Qiu—she actually carried it with her at all times to touch up her makeup.
After she carefully finished applying the paint, A-Qiu curiously looked at the water below the pavilion. What she saw almost stunned her.
She herself, along with the two snow-white faces peeking out from the sides, one plump and one thin, were almost identical.
Zhang E was very satisfied with the result and nodded, saying, "Now they won't be able to tell us apart."
As A Qiu was lost in thought, wondering who the "they" she was referring to were, a sudden gust of wind rose in front of her, and a heavy kick struck her lower body.
Caught off guard, A Qiu was kicked into a split position and let out a blood-curdling scream.
Zhang E said with satisfaction, "This way, the shouts won't disturb other people's practice."
Given A Qiu's sense of awareness as a Lanling Assassin, she should have been able to easily dodge this kick.
However, this kick carried neither murderous intent nor hostility. It was as if it were merely a matter of fact, a businesslike greeting, without any prior intention.
In comparison, the bamboo stick that Sun's wife used to slap her back then was somewhat intentional, even before the body moved.
Ah Qiu almost cried: Is this the terrifying thing about someone who doesn't know martial arts but still resorts to violence?
Zhang E straightened the hem of her dance costume, seemingly extremely satisfied with her accurate and ruthless flying kick.
Cui Luzhu clapped her hands and laughed, "Alright, you can just sit here and wait. We'll come back in half an hour to help you change positions."
A-Qiu watched as the two girls, one tall and one short, returned to their practice. Facing the vast blue water below the pavilion and his own messy white face, he felt like crying but had no way to cry, and had nowhere to turn for help.
This was probably the worst experience of my life.
She endured the pain and quietly changed her posture to alleviate the pain in her feet.
Even those who are stabbed must stretch their muscles and bones, but our teaching method is not so brutal. The master advocates acting according to one's ability, because everyone's muscle and bone strength and body structure are different, and forcibly stretching them at once may not be useful.
The way the two girls treated her didn't seem like they were deliberately making things difficult for her. It's very likely that they were learning in the same way, and therefore considered it an essential step in learning dance.
But they overlooked one thing.
They usually start training their muscles and bones at the age of four or five. Ah Qiu is now sixteen years old, and her bones are fully developed. Judging from Zhang E'xu's kick, if Ah Qiu hadn't had a foundation in stretching and strengthening her muscles and bones since childhood, and her fascia was not as tough and thick as that of ordinary people, it would be strange if she hadn't been seriously injured.
The two girls kept their promise and returned half an hour later.
As soon as A-Qiu spotted them from afar, she quietly adjusted her posture to be exactly the same as before, so that the two of them wouldn't notice her "laziness".
Zhang E'xu indeed came to inspect it and was very satisfied. She and Cui Luzhu exchanged a knowing glance and nodded, saying, "Let's change positions."
A-Qiu was on guard, not knowing what torture awaited her next. The two men carefully half-carried, half-helped her up from the ground, as if afraid of hurting her.
Then, he carefully patted them to restore blood circulation to the numb feet.
A Qiu secretly speculated that this was probably because the two of them considered themselves "promising talents," and therefore felt a greater sense of mutual appreciation.
Her guess was close enough; Zhang E'xu and Cui Luzhu had both studied dance since childhood, and had endured much of the pain of stretching their muscles and bones. All their peers in the dance troupe had to go through this ordeal. Some screamed in agony, while others wept incessantly.
Ah Qiu only let out a scream when he was kicked, and then remained silent. This ability to endure pain was truly admirable to the two men.
The truth is, firstly, A Qiu cut corners during his training, and secondly, none of the Lanling assassins are afraid of pain.
After the two women finished patting her, Zhang Exu looked at Cui Luzhu with a questioning gaze: "Is it alright now?"
Cui Luzhu nodded with a smile: "That's fine."
Ah Qiu breathed a sigh of relief, thinking that he could finally escape his misery. He figured that next he would have to learn some kind of Qi cultivation technique from Cui Luzhu.
As a result—when she was caught off guard again, Zhang Exu, though slender and tall, was actually as strong as iron. She grabbed her by the waist, lifted her upside down, and threw her face up to the sky.
A Qiu suddenly realized he was upside down, the world had turned upside down. He cursed inwardly: "This is something only someone who doesn't know martial arts could do!"
Because they possess brute strength but lack martial arts skills, they can act without remorse and disregard martial ethics.
Cui Luzhu smiled and reminded him, "Place your hands and feet down together and hold on."
A Qiu landed on his hands and feet simultaneously, his body like a crescent moon bridge, both stable and upright, his posture perfectly balanced.
The two girls cheered in unison, as if they had witnessed some novel and interesting monkey show. Then, one after the other, they ran back to their team to practice.
Only A-Qiu was left, leaning against the ground in a backward arching position, not daring to let go for a moment, and inwardly groaning in agony.
So this is how the dance club trains...
A-Qiu stood upside down, watching the pond water gradually turn yellow, as the afterglow of the setting sun slowly seeped into the vast expanse of water.
The chill of night seeped into her clothes, but she didn't feel cold.
The world upside down looked strange, very different from usual.
Is this the world that someone born as a maiko (geisha) often sees?
Looking at the pale face and bright red lips reflected in the pool, she would feel a sense of disorientation, wondering if it was her own reflection or the ghost of the musicians in the Pear Blossom Garden who were trapped.
She suddenly recalled the whispered conversation the dancers had had about "ghost dancers" before she went to sleep last night.
The performers here are not only newcomers, but also descendants of veterans of the Music Bureau. They are performers who have been learning music and art in the Music Bureau for generations, so they know some stories and anecdotes about the pear tree.
The "Oni-gi" is a female ghost dressed as a dancer, wearing a black and white dance costume, with a face covered in powder and lips as red as blood.
Regardless of wind, rain, sunshine, or rain, her appearances are unpredictable; she often walks along the pond, dragging her wooden clogs.
She can also be found in the covered walkways and waterways. Some people have seen her appear in the walkways, soaking wet, leaving long trails of water behind her.
Sometimes I would walk on the Echoing Corridor. At that time, a huge "thump-thump" sound, like a hollow drum from a deep abyss, would be heard.
Once, some daring people gathered a crowd and went to search for it with torches, but it suddenly disappeared without a trace.
One of the bolder musicians said, "It seems that this ghostly performance is only meant to scare people, but it may not actually harm them."
The person telling this story said, "It seems that way, but there's another point. In every generation of the Tangliyuan Dance Troupe, dancers would mysteriously disappear, never to be seen again, neither alive nor dead."
Someone added, "Seven people have been infected so far."
The dormitory, which had been filled with whispers, suddenly fell silent. Outside the window, the shadows of the trees rustled, and the wind whispered through the air.
I wonder if anyone's face turned deathly pale in the shadows.
Standing alone upside down, watching the sky darken and his own reflection in the water grow increasingly eerie, A-Qiu couldn't help but recall the vivid anecdote he had told last night, and a chill ran down his spine.
Zhang Exu and Cui Luzhu finally came to release her.
Ah Qiu felt as if he had been granted a pardon, as if he had been reborn.
“You, come eat with us.” Zhang E’xu pointed at her, then at Cui Luzhu and herself.
Cui Luzhu smiled good-naturedly: "Touch up your makeup, it's smudged."
A-Qiu asked in confusion, "Haven't we finished practicing? My wife shouldn't care about our makeup anymore."
Ignoring her rebuttal, Zhang E took out her powder box and began applying powder to her face with great seriousness.
Cui Luzhu didn't answer A Qiu, but only said, "Huang Lezheng came to see you today, wanting to take you out."
When A Qiu thought of Huang Chaoan's soft, cold, and delicate voice, as sharp as a snake's tongue, and his fair, beautiful face, she felt uneasy.
It's only been a day... He's being far too impatient.
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