Li Nanzhu spent another two days researching, but still made no significant progress.
Feng Yi did not rush her or advise her to give up. He continued to guide Li Nanzhu, instructing her on brushwork and spiritual energy circulation, showing no disappointment despite her repeated failures.
Although she hadn't successfully drawn a talisman, it wasn't without benefit.
Through constant use of the Wanxiang Brush, Li Nanzhu felt her spiritual energy circulated faster when using it, and her connection with the Wanxiang Brush deepened.
This good news dispelled much of the gloom from her failures.
Li Nanzhu felt her mood was still somewhat affected.
She simply headed to the Library Pavilion again, taking out paper and ink to begin copying books.
Mainly, she didn't know what else to write.
She treated it as calligraphy practice—using a brush helped her calm her mind.
Gentle sunlight bathed Li Nanzhu's face, slowly shifting across the transcribed pages as time passed.
Just as Li Nanzhu was about to set down the next stroke, the sunlight happened to fall on the next sentence she was to write.
【Talismans are the patterns of heaven and earth; scripts are the names of gods and ghosts. To master the Way of Talismans, one must start from 'Yong'.】
"One must start from 'Yong'... Yong..."
Li Nanzhu murmured.
The cultivation world's interpretation of this sentence was that the energy of all talismans ultimately and eternally originated from spiritual energy.
Only by possessing spiritual energy could one draw talismans.
But as a transmigrator, Li Nanzhu thought of another perspective.
In her original world, the status of the character "Yong" in Daoism was equivalent to the "Swastika" symbol in Buddhism.
At the same time, there was a basic rule in writing regular script known as the Eight Principles of Yong.
The reason was that if the character "Yong" was broken down and recombined in various ways, it could constitute almost every character in the world.
If that were the case, the eight strokes could correspond to the eight trigrams, aligning with the logic of celestial cycles. If all the runes on a talisman were broken down and mapped to the eight trigrams, while simultaneously understanding them as individual strokes of the "Yong" character...
Then she could fully understand the patterns on the talismans!
Once she realized this, Li Nanzhu immediately picked up her brush to begin the breakdown.
She started with the simplest and most basic dust-cleansing talisman.
Before the breakdown, although Li Nanzhu could understand the structure of the dust-cleansing talisman itself, she didn't quite grasp why it had to turn or hook in certain places.
But once she broke it down using this method, she suddenly found that what was once obscure and difficult to understand was actually beautiful and simple.
The runes had turned into individual strokes in her eyes. She only needed to remember the sequence of strokes and then recombine them!
It was like asking a high school student to solve primary school addition and subtraction.
It could be done easily, almost without thinking.
Li Nanzhu was in that state now.
Without further hesitation, she put pen to paper again. This time, there was none of the previous difficulty or stagnation; instead, it felt exceptionally smooth.
In Li Nanzhu's sensation, it felt more like the runes were actively pushing her brush forward. She hardly had to exert any effort, finally understanding the true meaning of that line in the book:
"Intent follows the qi, and the brush follows the intent."
When she lifted her brush again, a dust-cleansing talisman lay before her.
It didn't burn up or break. It even emitted a faint spiritual glow.
She had succeeded!
She also finally understood why using the character "Yong" for breakdown allowed her to succeed. The foundation of all talismans should have been centered on "Yong"; the runes were projections of spiritual energy circulation.
In modern Daoist talismans, the characters for "Order of the Decree" were common, but they were actually variations of the character "Yong."
So, these two seemingly unconnected worlds actually shared a subtle similarity in this aspect.
Li Nanzhu didn't know that her method of drawing talismans was already a completely new path. Once this method was promoted, it could mass-produce talisman masters.
But for now, she was simply happy that she had finally understood the true way to draw talismans.
She was also grateful for the calligraphy she had practiced to calm her mind and the knowledge she had absorbed over and over in the library.
Otherwise, it might have been truly difficult for her to become a talisman master.
Looking at the dust-cleansing talisman, Li Nanzhu carefully put it away.
After all, it was the first talisman she had successfully drawn, so it was worth keeping.
At the same time, Li Nanzhu was considering another question.
"Since each stroke corresponds to a specific spiritual energy circulation method, combining the eight strokes forms a complete celestial cycle."
Did that mean she could perhaps use this method to create a route for her body to absorb spiritual energy?
Could the Eight Principles of Yong also serve as a means of attack?
Currently, all of this was just Li Nanzhu's speculation.
The latter was fine, but the former was not something to be tried lightly. Randomly modifying spiritual energy circulation routes or adding a new one could be fatal for a cultivator. Success was one thing, but a single mistake would lead to qi deviation and the loss of all cultivation.
With her current ability, Li Nanzhu didn't think she was capable of making such modifications. However, as for an attack method, she felt she could try. Perhaps she could consult Feng Yi.
But Li Nanzhu wanted to try it herself first. After all, she hadn't been able to truly trust anyone so far.
This was the cultivation world, not her original world. Moreover, she knew clearly from her time in the modern era the wisdom of telling only thirty percent of the truth to anyone and never baring one's whole heart.
Otherwise, how could an orphan like her have grown up so easily?
Since the thought had occurred to her, she might as well try it directly.
Li Nanzhu once again gathered spiritual energy into the Wanxiang Brush. This time, she didn't rely on talisman paper but used spiritual energy to draw directly in the air.
The drawing process was harder than she had imagined.
Drawing without a medium required much more precise control of spiritual energy than drawing on a talisman. Similarly, drawing a talisman involved using talisman ink, but for writing in the air to make it an attack, ink was completely useless. She had to compress spiritual energy into a liquid state.
This point alone left Li Nanzhu stuck at the beginning.
Li Nanzhu thought about compressing her spiritual energy into a liquid state first and then dipping the Wanxiang Brush into it. But even after using nearly a hundred high-grade spirit stones, she only managed to get a tiny dish of liquefied spiritual energy.
Although this method did allow Li Nanzhu to successfully draw one stroke...
It was only one stroke, and it had absolutely no offensive power. It was far worse than she had anticipated, not to mention the cost of so many high-grade spirit stones.
And so, this method was declared a failure as well.
"Do I need to use mental power?"
After all, drawing talismans required the assistance of mental power. But now she had no cultivation technique for mental power. Even when drawing talismans, her mental power was used passively. The possibility of directly controlling her mental power was currently zero for her.
"It looks like I'll have to find a cultivation technique related to mental power. I wonder if the Library Pavilion has any."
Having made up her mind, Li Nanzhu was in no hurry. She had only successfully made one dust-cleansing talisman, so she intended to draw a few more.
Then, after she had drawn seven in a row, her head hit the table with a thud.
Li Nanzhu's last thought as she sank into darkness was:
"Did I knock over my talisman ink?"
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