Jiapingguan Chronicle

Chapter 2866 Master Qingsong 84.0
Jin Miaomiao looked at Shen Haolin, Shen Cha, and then at Song Yaojia, and let out a heavy sigh.

"Why are you sighing all of a sudden? It's not good to sigh all the time." Merlin patted Jin Miaomiao, leaned over to look at her expression, chuckled, and said, "What's wrong with you?"

"I just have some mixed feelings." Jin Miaomiao took a bite of noodles, chewed for a long time, and continued, "I didn't expect that the title of 'Thousand-Faced Scholar' was not an exaggeration, but a fact."

"Isn't that an exaggeration?" Merlin asked, puzzled. He looked at Song Yaojia and said, "Your Highness, is it really true? Can the Thousand-Handed Scholar really paint so many portraits in just one day and one night? That's almost a thousand!"

"Hmm!" Song Yaojia nodded, then chuckled when she saw Merlin's incredulous expression, and said, "Isn't it incredibly unbelievable?"

"This is unbelievable." Jin Miaomiao looked at the side dish, took a bite, and said, "Is this considered a kind of kung fu?"

“I guess so!” Song Yaojia looked at Jin Miaomiao and smiled. “To be honest, I was just like you when I first heard this story. I didn’t believe it either. I thought, how could there be such a person in the world? How could there be such amazing skills? To be able to draw thousands of portraits in one night is completely beyond human capability.”

"And then? Why did Your Highness believe it?"

"They say seeing is believing." Song Yaojia pointed to her phoenix eyes. "Naturally, I only believed it after seeing it with my own eyes. There really is such a miraculous skill in this world."

"You've seen it? You actually saw it? Shouldn't someone with that kind of skill be carried on their back?"

“He’s not that kind of person, and he doesn’t take his special skills seriously.” Song Yaojia took a sip of tea and continued rolling up his noodles, saying as he did so, “It was by chance that I witnessed the Thousand-Handed Scholar’s ​​skill.”

"A coincidence?" Shen Cha thought for a moment, "Brother Yao Jia, are you referring to that birthday celebration?"

"What's wrong with the Emperor's birthday?" Jin Miaomiao picked up a piece of her side dish and said slowly, "Isn't it a day of universal celebration?"

"That year, on the Emperor's birthday, because the late Empress Dowager was seriously ill, it was necessary to offer a great many copies of the Diamond Sutra to Xiangguo Temple to pray for her well-being." Shen Cha sighed softly, "But when the various prefectures received this news, there were only three days left until the Emperor's birthday."

"Three days? That's impossible."

“That’s what we all thought,” Song Yaojia sighed and said. “If ten thousand copies of the Diamond Sutra were distributed among the residences of the imperial relatives and nobles in the capital, each residence would need to make at least five hundred copies. With such a short time, we would need to find more helpers. So, my initial plan was to gather all the people in the residence with beautiful handwriting to make the copies, but my uncle and father said that it wasn’t necessary to make such a fuss, and that one person could handle it all.”

"Does this person refer to the Thousand-Handed Scholar?"

“Yes!” Song Yaojia smiled. “My uncle and father invited the Thousand-Handed Scholar and explained the situation to him. He readily agreed. My father prepared everything he needed according to his request and told me that by the time I woke up the next day, the five hundred copies would be finished. I had heard of the Thousand-Handed Scholar before, but I had never seen him use his thousand hands. So, I couldn’t sleep at night, and I secretly slipped out of my own courtyard and went to the courtyard where the Thousand-Handed Scholar was staying to take a look.”

"The results of it?"

“There’s no need for him to sneak around. He just openly copied them in the courtyard, and…” Song Yaojia thought for a moment, and the scene he had witnessed that day flashed before his eyes again. He stuffed the rolled-up dough into his mouth, and after finishing it, he continued, “He didn’t copy them in the usual way. He hung all the scrolls on the trees in the courtyard. He was light and agile, like lightning and thunder in the sky.”

"That does sound like it." "A method for practicing lightness skills, right?"

“Yes!” Jin Miaomiao nodded. “Xiao Cha and the others used this method when they practiced their lightness skills before.”

“Me?” Shen Cha pointed to herself, and seeing Jin Miaomiao nod, she thought for a moment, “My master taught me.”

"Uncle Qin saw it from my master and then taught it to you. I guess," Shen Haolin looked at Shen Cha and then at Song Yaojia, "the source is the Thousand-Handed Scholar."

“I think so too, but I don’t know where he learned it from.” Song Yaojia was curious when she saw Jin Miaomiao eating the side dish with great enthusiasm, so she also picked up a piece with her chopsticks. As soon as she put it in her mouth, she couldn’t help but frown. “What is this? It tastes so strange.”

“It’s a kind of wild vegetable that’s good for clearing heat.” Jin Miaomiao smiled. “However, this method of practicing kung fu is quite good; at least it’s not boring.”

“Yes!” Song Yaojia nodded. “That’s what he said too.”

"Did you two chat for a bit?"

“Yes, he copied the scriptures very quickly. Actually, to be precise, it shouldn’t be called copying scriptures, but rather memorizing them.” Song Yaojia thought for a moment, “He finished in less than two hours. I sat and watched him for two hours. Later, when we were chatting, I learned that when he was very young, he found practicing lightness skills boring. In addition, his family worshipped Buddha and had to copy scriptures every day, so he came up with this method.”

"So, that means his own method, right?"

"No, at the beginning, his speed was normal, not like it is now. Later, after his family was exiled, he had a strange encounter during the exile. According to him, he drank some strange well water and fell into a deep sleep for ten days. During those ten days, he had a high fever, and the people around him thought he was going to die. However, on the morning of the eleventh day, his fever suddenly broke, and he was as if he had never been sick. But from that day on, he became much lighter, and his lightness skill became even more amazing."

“This experience…” Shen Cha looked at Shen Haolin, then at Jin Miaomiao, and said, “It sounds so familiar!”

"Indeed." Jin Miaomiao stroked her chin. "Your Highness, how old is the Thousand-Handed Scholar?"

"When I met him that year," Song Yaojia thought for a moment, holding up one finger, "he had just turned sixty, but he looked no different from a young man in his twenties or thirties." He looked at Shen Haolin, then at Shen Cha, "I think about the same things as you, that he is similar to the situation of Senior Tantai, my uncle, and Uncle Xiao Wang, but also a little different."

"Different?" Shen Cha frowned slightly. "How are they different? Are there signs of aging?"

"Well, I'm not entirely sure myself," Song Yaojia shook his head gently. "It's what my uncle said about the difference. The elder also came to see it and confirmed that it is indeed different. Elder Tantai said that he, my uncle, and even Uncle Wang all changed their appearances as they aged, but after a certain point, their appearances stopped changing and remained the same, while their physical condition also stopped changing." He looked at Jin Miaomiao. "Right?"

“Yes!” Jin Miaomiao nodded. “For many years to come, they will maintain this situation without any changes.” She thought for a moment, then looked at Song Yaojia. “Isn’t the Thousand-Handed Scholar different?”

“As I just said, although he’s over sixty years old, he looks like a young man in his twenties or thirties because he accidentally drank well water when he was in his twenties, and that hasn’t changed over the years. But his physical condition…” Song Yaojia gently shook his head at Jin Miaomiao, sighed, and said, “Unlike the elders, uncles, and young Uncle Wang who don’t change, he will age, but very slowly. If we change every year, then the Thousand-Handed Scholar will change a little bit every fifteen or twenty years.” He paused for a moment, “He’s been examined by Master Huilan, but the master didn’t have any good solutions.”

"This is just my personal guess, but it should be an evolution." Jin Miaomiao thought for a moment, "This is just my personal guess, but it should be an evolution."