Bitter Realm: Have the Four Realms been united today?

Chapter 26: Imitation and Whipping

Another incense stick's time has passed, and Xuanming still has no answer.

Yue Tianji didn't seem to expect Xuanming to answer, and asked the next question.

"Killing one person gives you a one-in-ten chance of another surviving. Will you kill or not?"

"Of course I won't kill them!"

"The odds of one in ten are too small. How can we just sacrifice a life like this?"

"One in ten...that's indeed a slim chance." The coldness in Yue Tianji's words was almost like ice.

Xuanming finally realized something was wrong and felt a pang of panic: "Mr. Yue, I'm not being sentimental, it's just..."

Yue Tianji completely ignored Xuanming's explanation and went on to ask the next question.

"There was a young man who was exceptionally intelligent, but lacked proper instruction and knew nothing about calligraphy."

"The teacher was a skilled calligrapher, but he required the boy to imitate the characters he left behind in a short time, not only in form but also in spirit."

"If it is not completed, it will be considered a disrespectful act, and the offender will be punished with whipping for negligence."

"Was this gentleman's rule a genuine attempt to teach, or was he deliberately trying to make things difficult?"

"Should the young man refuse outright after hearing the master's request, or should he resign himself to it and force himself to comply?"

Xuanming shook his head and said, "To expect a complete beginner to imitate the calligraphy of a master in a short time, let alone capture its essence, is a pipe dream."

"That gentleman is quite accomplished in calligraphy. He must know that the key to calligraphy is practice."

"So that gentleman was deliberately making things difficult for the boy, and the boy should have refused."

"Good, remember what you just said!" Yue Tianji picked up his pen and wrote the character "粮" (grain) on the paper.

He pushed the paper in front of Xuanming, his voice icy: "Within a quarter of an hour, imitate this character, capturing both its form and spirit."

"If it fails, you already know the consequences."

"Sir?" Xuanming was taken aback, not understanding why Yue Tianji's attitude had changed so suddenly.

"Mr. Yue seems angry. Was my previous answer wrong? Did I go wrong somewhere...?"

A quarter of an hour passed in the blink of an eye.

Xuanming remained staring blankly at the paper, neither writing nor speaking.

Yue Tianji stood up expressionlessly and walked behind the young man.

White energy swirled at his fingertips, condensing into a sharp, long whip.

With a flick of his wrist, the whip flashed down through the air.

"what!"

Caught off guard, Xuanming cried out in pain.

Yue Tianji put away the long whip in his hand, walked to Xuanming's side, and looked at the painful expression on the boy's face, but there was no pity in his eyes.

"I never speak in jest!"

Xuanming endured the sharp pain in his back and said tremblingly, "It was me... I was distracted, and I should be punished. Please, please give me another quarter of an hour."

"Alright!" Yue Tianji's eyes grew even colder. He wanted to see just how much this young man could despise himself.

Xuanming dared not let his mind wander any further. He picked up his brush, dipped it in ink, and began to write on the Xuan paper.

After making one stroke, Xuanming did not continue with the next stroke, but instead found another place to repeat the same stroke.

He didn't write another stroke until he had changed locations more than a dozen times, and then the same process repeated itself.

Before he knew it, the Xuan paper in front of him had been replaced several times.

"A quarter of an hour has passed!" Yue Tianji's cold voice rang out again.

Xuanming, however, seemed to have been prepared. He put down his brush and calmly said, "Please punish me, sir!"

Yue Tianji remained silent, then conjured a long whip once more and lashed it at Xuanming's back.

Under Yue Tianji's deliberate manipulation, the position where this whip fell was exactly the same as the previous one, which was extremely vicious.

The crack of the whip was clear, followed by a muffled groan, and then the dull thud of a chest hitting the table.

The white whip dissipated, and blood began to seep into the blue robe.

Yue Tianji stared at the bloodstain, a look of surprise flashing in his eyes.

"Only two lashes and he's this weak? It seems his body is weaker than I thought. This punishment was too harsh!"

"Should we continue?"

Xuanming was in so much pain that he broke out in a cold sweat and couldn't even turn his head to look at the heavenly secrets. He endured the excruciating pain and forced himself to straighten up and return to a sitting position.

"Continue."

The pity in Yue Tianji's eyes was instantly extinguished by coldness, and his aura became sharper.

"As you wish!"

Xuanming picked up his pen again, took a deep breath, and focused all his attention on the tip of the pen.

But this time, instead of writing just one stroke as before, he began to try writing the entire character.

"This character for 'grain' looks complicated, but if you break it down, it only has four strokes: horizontal, vertical, dot, left-falling stroke, and right-falling stroke. And it's very similar to the regular script I practiced in school!"

"After practicing the individual strokes, the shapes are already basically approximate; now we just need to combine them."

"This stroke should be longer, and this part should be higher..."

His wrist movements were steady, each stroke, each line, unfolded gradually, truly possessing the spirit of Yue Tianji's writing.

Just as the horizontal stroke of the character "日" was about to be completed, the movement of his wrist aggravated the whip wound on his right shoulder, sending a sharp, tearing pain through him.

Caught off guard, Xuanming's wrist trembled, and the pen went out of control, leaving a messy ink mark on the paper.

All our efforts were in vain!

Xuanming stared at the words that had been destroyed, his jaw clenching involuntarily.

A familiar bitter taste rose in my throat.

He closed his eyes, suppressing the sob that almost escaped his lips, and focused his gaze on the blank space on the rice paper, preparing to start writing again from scratch.

However, when he raised his hand, a sharp pain shot through his right shoulder, and his right arm, which was holding the brush, trembled slightly.

Xuanming mentally prepared himself for the pain before gritting his teeth and struggling to control his wrist to continue writing.

Fine beads of cold sweat kept appearing on his forehead, and the pauses between strokes became longer and longer.

Xuanming's heart sank to the bottom little by little.

It's too late. At this rate, there's simply not enough time left for him to finish the character.

Sure enough, just as the last stroke of the character "米" was about to be completed, that familiar, heart-stopping sound tore through the air once again.

"gentlemen!!!"

Xuanming screamed almost instinctively.

Ignoring the pain from the whip marks, he frantically tried to move his right arm to the right, attempting to pull the tip of the brush away from the "米" character he had painstakingly written.

However, everything happened too fast.

Snapped! ! !

The third lash struck the already torn and bleeding wound with pinpoint accuracy, in the exact same spot as the first lash.

Xuanming felt that the force was fierce and decisive, as if it had not struck flesh and blood, but had smashed directly into the bone.

Beneath the blue robe, the whip marks that had solidified into dark brown instantly burst open.

Fresh blood quickly seeped out, soaking through the fabric and turning back into a glaring, sticky scarlet.

"Waaah...!" Xuanming let out a sob, his vision suddenly went black, and he almost collapsed onto the table.

He clenched his teeth tightly to suppress the agonizing roar deep in his throat.

He felt as if his right shoulder was being repeatedly burned by a red-hot iron. His entire right arm felt nothing but pain, and even his fingertips were trembling uncontrollably.

The character "米" (rice) that had just been written was completely ruined by the uncontrolled fall of the pen, leaving only a mess of ink.