Painting Ninety-Five: The Secret of the Birth Pool

Only a handful of people were putting pictures into the life-giving pool. Most of the crowd around the basin had come for the spectacle, or else carrying containers to draw water.

Snowball’s arrival instantly cleared half the poolside. Some even bowed to Sang Sang. Although this was a life-giving pool for commoners, noble artists sometimes used it to test newly painted spirit images. No one dared object that it could not be used to give birth to beast-riders; people had clearly long since grown accustomed to the special privileges enjoyed by artists.

Sang Sang arched a brow. She had discovered that the people of Danxia possessed a peculiar gift for judging others at a glance. Any fool could tell she was an artist capable of commanding spiritual energy, though she had no artist’s badge and had never even registered with the Artists’ Guild.

At that moment, on the far side of the pool, a young couple was animating a child into being. The infant spirit image had just been placed in the water. Its spiritual energy content was about five. At the bottom of the pool, the soul-gathering formation shone with a pale brilliance invisible to the naked eye. As pure soul essence was infused by the water’s spiritual energy, the colors of the spirit image deepened and grew ever more lifelike. It gradually took on volume; then a heartbeat emerged, the child opened its eyes, paddled its limbs, and wriggled free from the painting, splashing in the water.

Blood had likely been mixed into the painting by that couple. The child bore a clear blood tie to them.

“Mother Fu, you do it. The little brother’s affinity with spiritual energy will surely be very high after birth.”

Of course it would be very high. The painting originally held no more than four standard crystals’ worth of spiritual energy, but when she had studied it, she casually raised that to forty. It could not be higher, because forty was the painting’s maximum capacity for spiritual energy. Add even a thread more and it would destroy itself.

Mother Fu nervously placed the infant spirit image into the pool. Sang Sang noticed that the pale light of the soul-gathering formation at the pool bottom was noticeably brighter than when the couple’s child had been placed in it, and the soul poured into the image was far clearer. It was no longer a hazy wisp, but a humanoid shadow, and it drew in even more waterborne spiritual energy...

“A strange soul-gathering array. Why is there a ripple of spatial teleportation...”

Sang Sang frowned, leaning forward to reach a hand into the pool bottom and touch the formation, trying to trace the source of the fluctuation.

A clamor rose in the distance. A group of martial masters, bringing their slave-warriors with them, approached menacingly and surrounded the life-giving pool.

“We are here to seize one person only. Everyone else, back away.”

Mother Fu’s child had not yet finished taking shape. Naturally she refused to withdraw. Xiu’er hid behind Snowball and tugged at Sang Sang’s sleeve. “They’re after you. Hurry and ride the snow fox away.”

Snowball lifted his eyelids, then went back to resting his head on his tail and dozing. Sang Sang did not even raise her eyes, and merely said coolly, “Get lost and go back where you came from.”

“What?” Xiu’er had not heard clearly. Anxiously, she said, “It’s people from the Pen family. Sang Sang, you need to...”

She did not finish. The sudden change in events left her staring in bewilderment, and the words “hurry and run” died on her tongue.

Several dozen martial masters and slave-warriors, who had come with such force and were fully prepared for a good fight, became, in the next instant, as if possessed. Each curled himself into a ball and rolled back the way they had come, all in a neat line. Though their posture was absurd, their momentum did not diminish in the least. Those who had been too startled to get out of the way were knocked sprawling all over the place, and the whole procession rolled back to the Pen family. Only then did they recover, uncurling their limbs as they cried out in pain.

“Didn’t they say the protecting martial masters weren’t there? How could they fail to capture even one unregistered little artist!”

The returning men could not explain what had happened, only that they had just driven away the onlookers and were about to strike when, for reasons they themselves could not understand, they rolled all the way back here. Yet their memories were perfectly clear; it did not feel as though they had been possessed or controlled by some wandering spirit. Everything had been their own decision. At the time, they had simply thought of taking an unconventional route.

Seeing this, how could the Pen family not realize they had underestimated the other side’s strength?

“Interesting.” The great artist from Wishful City, currently staying at the Pen residence because of the Thousand Pens Convention, stroked his beard. “They never used a painting at all. They simply issued commands directly into your souls. What an exquisite method. That little artist must have awakened memories from a previous life. I shall go meet her myself.”

To the people of Danxia, artists were lofty, untouchable dignitaries. But in the world of artists, what did object artists or spirit-image artists amount to? Nothing more than common practitioners. Truly noble were the masters whose cultivation touched upon the soul and could even bring the dead back to life, and still more so the divine painters who could paint in their hearts without paper or brush.

By the life-giving pool, people were still immersed in the aftermath of the Pen family retainers’ collective madness. Though none dared laugh openly, they exchanged knowing glances and gestures, gossiping in silent amusement. The empty space around Sang Sang had grown even wider.

Xiu’er had seen Sang Sang deal with beasts before and knew she was formidable. She also knew the earlier men had certainly not gone mad for no reason. Yet in her heart, the Pen family was far more terrifying. “Sang Sang, let’s go back. The Pen family is sheltering a great artist now.”

Sang Sang looked up. Mother Fu’s child had already been born and was happily gnawing on a sweet fruit. She reached out to pat the child’s head, then checked and found that the compatibility between his body and soul was actually above ninety-five percent, with a fairly good affinity for spiritual energy...

Hm? A great artist was coming this way from afar, and from the route he was taking, it seemed he was headed straight for her.

Sang Sang waved her hand and sent Xiu’er, Mother Fu, and the child lightly onto Snowball’s back. “You all go back first. Snowball, take them home. Don’t come again afterward.”

Clouds gathered beneath Snowball’s feet, and he rose into the air.

When the great artist from Wishful City arrived aboard a giant roc, Sang Sang was sitting on the steps, feeding beast-rider images into the life-giving pool.

“What are you studying?” The great artist stood beside Sang Sang and looked into the pool with her, while his attendants dispersed the crowd.

Sang Sang replied truthfully, “The source of the soul.”

The great artist stroked his beard. “Is that still something to study? Every artist knows the souls in the life-giving pool come from the Danxia Sea.”

Sang Sang raised her head and fixed her clear amber eyes on him. “What would happen if a human soul awakened its memories after entering a beast’s body?”

The great artist lifted his brows. “That’s a good thing. Human souls possess higher intelligence. They’re naturally the best choice for beast-riders and battle-beasts. Once memories awaken, their learning ability becomes even stronger. Just like my Flying Fern—it has memories from a previous life as a human, which makes it very easy to train. I hope you also gain a powerful pet.”

“Bad,” Sang Sang said, shaking her head. “I think that is bad, and wrong. How can humans and beasts be confused with each other?”

“So you are actually a defender of orthodoxy.” As he spoke, the great artist struck without warning. He reached out and seized at her, spiritual energy surging as it rushed toward Sang Sang. “That makes things easier. I can safely absorb the memories of your previous life and strengthen my own power.”

“You want to see Sang Sang’s memories and did you ask me?” The Heavenly Emperor suddenly appeared in front of Sang Sang. With a grasp of his hand, the imposing great artist was forcibly crumpled into a heap as though he were a paper tiger, emitting shrill cries as he shrank smaller and smaller, until he became a fist-sized lump of flesh.

“Your creator god is watching. I won’t let your soul scatter to the winds.”

The Heavenly Emperor shook his hand, and the lump of flesh dissolved into spiritual energy and merged into the air. Then he complained to Sang Sang, “The bugs have already crawled up over your head and are acting all mighty. Why haven’t you crushed them yet?”

“You came, didn’t you,” Sang Sang said casually. She stroked the dragon-horse emerging from the pool, covering those eyes brimming with spiritual energy, and through temporal backtracking followed the dragon-horse’s soul to observe its past in a mirrored time-space.

“So it really is a human soul.”

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