Anji woke up to the smell of ink instead of incense. Curious, she rolled herself off the bed and saw Gu Ying whispering to the maids, passing them a new sheet of paper with a drawing. It seemed like something fun, so the young princess crept up to them silently to take a closer look.
"What’s that? Is this a martial arts comic book?" she asked, clambering to the nearby stool for a better look, mindful of the ink slab.
Startled by her student’s sudden appearance, Gu Ying jolted and left an unsightly stain on an unfinished page. Despite ruining her work in the past ten minutes, the teacher’s aide did not scold Anji. She appeared slightly embarrassed after getting discovered.
"It’s a picture book," Gu Ying explained with a small trace of smile on her face. "I thought you might still be confused even after this morning’s explanation, so I prepared something similar to a martial manual with the maids to help you revise it." ɪꜰ ʏᴏᴜ ᴡᴀɴᴛ ᴛᴏ ʀᴇᴀᴅ ᴍᴏʀᴇ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs, ᴘʟᴇᴀsᴇ ᴠɪsɪᴛ novel·fire.net
Oh! Not only was Gu Ying pretty, but she was also very thoughtful. No wonder her mother selected her out of many other inner disciples to become her teacher aide. Anji appreciated that thoughtfulness. Although she could remember most of the routine she saw earlier, there were some minor details she needed clarification about. She thought she would ask Gu Ying tomorrow. However, her martial sister was one step ahead of her.
"Can I take a look at some of the finished pages?" Anji asked.
"Of course," Gu Ying gestured to a maid to bring one of the papers hanging on a washing line outside. The first few pages she completed about an hour ago should be dried by now.
The sheet was brought inside, and it felt cold to the touch after embracing the winter breeze for an hour. However, the ink was now dry, and there was no risk of smudging it. Anji studied the pretty drawing carefully and noted Gu Ying’s secret talent for drawing. Her brother, Mingshen, would have liked this.
"Did you draw this yourself?" Anji traced her hand over the controlled lines and well-blended colours. It appeared to be a mixture of ink, chalk and charcoal. The images were accompanied by careful descriptions that depicted excerpts from the original martial manual. Moreover, the tiny zoomed-in illustrations emphasising finer key points that her mother explained this morning had been included for her revision. It was an extremely valuable martial manual!
However, after studying three pages of the "picture book", Anji quickly realised something.
"There’s no flow connection between the movements," she frowned. "Is there a missing page?"
Worriedly, the maids who accompanied Gu Ying to work hard on the picture book racked their brains to defend Gu Ying’s work. The Manchurian cultivator worked so hard to include as many things as possible in her notes while not cluttering the page. Although there was no flow between the detailed explanation for each move, it was still a good book!
"That’s right," Gu Ying acknowledged Anji’s acute observation. "Gu Ying is lacking. I could not find a way to include the flow between movements without making it confusing. It was easier to describe the pose of each main movement and demonstrate the flow myself."
Oh, so that’s the reason. Anji studied the two pages and swapped them around several times, flipping them rapidly. If only there were a way to slowly move the pictures from the first pose to the second one...
"Wait," she sat upright. "I think I know how it can be done. It will be a lot of work, but if we do it right, I think this new martial comic book could sell for a lot."
Confused, Gu Ying made space when Anji reached for a new sheet of paper and her charcoal pencils. The maids fretted about Anji’s sleeves and quickly folded them while the eager toddler scribbled on the paper she grabbed. It was a horrible drawing, but Anji never claimed to be as aesthetically inclined as her second brother. However, she grabbed a stack of ten pieces of paper and drew the same horrible circles, only shifting their positions a little on each page until it touched the line at the bottom that remained on the same spot throughout all ten pages. Then, she gathered the pages in order and proudly presented her "magic trick" to the confused maids.
"I present you my comic book — Bouncing Ball!"
With her thumb at the edges of the pages, Anji bent them until they could quickly flip over when she released some pressure on her thumb. As a result, the slightly disoriented circles on the pages appeared as if they were moving from the top to the line at the bottom that was meant to be the floor.
"It’s moving!" Gu Ying gasped, unable to believe her eyes. "How is it moving? We can definitely connect the poses with this moving drawing technique!"
Laughing at Gu Ying and the maid’s amazement, Anji revealed that this was an old children’s trick who were bored in class. Mingshen taught Anji how to do little tricks to cheer her up when she could not remember all the difficult characters for one of her secret lessons. He drew her a bird that had fallen off a tree and was hopping continuously on the ground. However, he only used two pieces of paper back then because the bird only needed to hop up and down. When he flipped the paper repeatedly and quickly, the bird looked like it was jumping at the bottom of the tree, trying to return to the nest it fell from. Anji merely extended the animation technique to more pages.
Despite her humble explanation, Gu Ying finally understood why the sect pampered their youngest lady. She was not only exceptionally bright. If she could cultivate, there would be no contender for the heir of the sect. The brilliance of her mind knew no boundaries. No wonder the Mystical Qilin Sect leader wanted to take Anji as her personal pupil.
"Young mistress, could you permit me some time to create this martial comic for you? I have to redraw most of these illustrations for the movement flow. However, it will become the best martial manual anyone has ever created. Imagine if we could do this for all the other basic martial arts. Even commoners could learn without knowing how to read!"
One of the major headaches the Celestial Dragon Sect faced was the huge number of illiterate applicants to the sect. Many martial artists had great thinking skills, physical conditions and memory. However, learning to read took a considerable amount of time. The only way for outer disciples to learn more martial arts techniques was to visit the library. Martial manuals did not have illustrations. Hence, it was impossible to self-study without the guidance of a senior or teacher. However, Anji’s martial comic could resolve their manpower issue. If students could self-study, the seniors and teachers could leave the sect to perform more important work outside the sect!
Unaware of her contribution to her sect, Anji nodded eagerly. She loved the drawings Gu Ying created and could not wait to have her very own martial comic book to learn from without becoming a burden to anyone. Even without her mother or Gu Ying, Anji should be able to learn the twenty-four-step routine secretly at night for an hour before bed.