“‘A question of how to read them’?” The ghosts looked at Tang Jie in surprise and confusion.
“Yes. Let’s try and read them backward,” Tang Jie proposed. “Start from the very last one.”
The ghosts looked to the last mural as Tang Jie began to narrate.
“The eighteenth mural. While this mural depicts a woman standing among a sea of corpses, as if she has just committed a massacre, if you look carefully, you’ll find that all of them froze or starved to death. Look at their thin and haggard appearances, their tattered clothes. These people don’t seem like officials at all, more like refugees. As for this woman, perhaps she’s just one of the refugees, with various techniques employed to make her stand out. Her look to the heavens might not be a wail of grief and anger, but a cry of despair.
“The seventeenth mural depicts a marriage ceremony being held in a certain kingdom, the couple swearing their vows of devotion.
“On the sixteenth mural, a cold and starving woman makes her way through a wasteland. She is tired and hungry, and she collapses once her strength runs out. Fortunately, a passing Immortal saves her and brings her back to pass on Immortal arts to her… but notice that while if you read it in reverse order, this happened after the previous mural, that doesn’t actually mean that it occurred later. On the contrary, this incident probably happened several hundred years earlier, but it’s impossible to show that on a mural.
“In the fifteenth mural, the woman’s cultivation soars under the Immortal’s instruction. She proved herself to be a genius, quickly reaching Cognitive Creation, only a step away from Celestial Heart. Alas, she was unable to cross this last step, so she could only blankly gaze up at the heavens in sorrow… It’s not hard to figure out. Do you see a Spirit Ring anywhere on this mural? So she was at Cognitive Creation at best.
“When a cultivator reaches a certain level, they will go among the people to hone themselves in the mortal world, comprehending the Great Dao by experiencing the vicissitudes of life. Thus, this woman ultimately decided to go down the mountain to hone herself and grow stronger.”
Tang Jie moved his finger to the fourteenth mural. “Being young and inexperienced, she ran into a big problem shortly after going down the mountain: a fierce fiend beast. As she was on the verge of losing, a white-robed general charged out to help her. Of course, it could be the other way around, that white-robed general encountering a fiend, and her coming to his rescue. Now that I think about it, the latter is more possible.”
“Interesting. I didn’t think you could read it this way.” The other ghosts were finally starting to understand the story. These murals required a lot of imagination to interpret, but once Tang Jie told everyone that they could read them backward, the story became very different.
The woman standing on the summit wasn’t thinking of her deceased husband, but of the path forward, and the two fighting together had not been husband and wife, but two strangers meeting by happenstance…
“Continue!” the Heartless Ghost King excitedly said.
Tang Jie continued down the murals. “After that battle, the white-robed general departed, and the woman continued on her original path, carrying out justice for the sake of people. Of course, killing corrupt officials and local tyrants makes enemies. Soon, she ended up offending a major official. Maybe she had killed his favorite concubine, or maybe it was his lawless illegitimate son. In short, the official gave the order to capture her. While her cultivation was good, in the end, she couldn’t stand up against the might of a country. Moreover, this official had many capable subordinates and could even call on cultivators for help. Thus, after a few tough battles, the woman had to flee in defeat.”
He moved to the ninth mural. “The woman battled with the soldiers sent by that official by a cliff. In that battle, the woman killed her pursuers but was herself heavily injured. But at that moment, the general commanding the force chose to not kill her, instead saving her… Interesting, right? When we were looking at these pictures the first way, we thought that the husband and wife were being chased. But in truth, the general was leading the soldiers against her. Why am I so sure about that? Look at the armor on the dead soldiers. It’s clearly the same kind as the white-robed general’s armor, meaning that these were his own troops! It was just that the artist drew him holding the woman and shouting at the soldiers, making it seem like they were fighting alongside each other. The reality is that he was probably crying out in grief over the death of his comrades.
“Regardless, in the end, he didn’t kill the woman. He might have recalled how they had fought alongside each other against the fiend, or he might have developed some affection for her, or maybe it was some other reason. In any case, what happened next was…”
He pointed at the eighth mural.
In a simple hut, the woman lay on the bed while the man fed her medicine.
Tang Jie casually said, “Reading it from front to back, you have no idea why she was injured. Of course, the artist cleverly concealed the wound to make it seem like she was sick. But ordinary illnesses don’t require the use of muscle growth powder…”
Tang Jie pointed at the bottom corner of the mural, where a small pouch of medicine had been drawn. There were no words on it, but anyone who had used muscle growth powder would immediately recognize it.
All the information had been there, just expertly hidden away.
“The next mural also makes more sense now,” the Heartless Ghost King said, pointing at the seventh mural. “That wasn’t them meeting, but them saying farewell. After tending to the woman, the general departed.”
“Correct—he did what he wanted to do, and left. In his view, perhaps this was returning the kindness shown by her when she saved him from the fiend,” Tang Jie chuckled. “Anyway, he left, not thinking that tending to her had planted the seed of affection in the woman. If you think about it, it’s not strange. When a woman who spent all her time cultivating and never knew romance was suddenly being attended to by a handsome man, how couldn’t she fall for him?”
He sighed and went to the next mural. “Thus, after her wounds recovered, she decided to go looking for the man she loved, to confess. She found him, but not in the situation she expected…”
The sixth mural depicted the white-robed general embracing a beautiful woman while being cheered on by soldiers.
Tang Jie then pointed at the fifth mural and sighed. “She went crazy and wandered the wilderness, wondering what to do. She must have felt very lost and confused. Of course, this mural plays another role, which is to bridge the scenes. From front to back, it seems like a woman searching for her husband, but it’s really a forlorn woman wandering the wilds. The artist would have had no need to draw this scene unless they had ulterior motives.”
Tang Jie went to the fourth mural. “Not long afterward, a war erupted. I can’t say if it was a coincidence or a conspiracy, but the neighboring country invaded. At that time, the woman suddenly had an idea. If the man lost in battle, he would be punished. He might be unable to keep his status as general, and that woman wouldn’t be willing to follow him. Wouldn’t the man be hers then?”
Tang Jie heaved another sigh. “It’s a very scary way of thinking, because she knew that this would result in the deaths of many innocents. But for her man, she was willing.”
He pointed at the third mural. “So she did it. When the war started, her beloved man went into battle, but no matter how heroic he was, he ultimately faced defeat. Of course, that woman was protecting him from the shadows, so he didn’t die. But this didn’t save him from being punished.”
His gaze turned to the second mural. “And this mural, such a beautiful piece of misdirection. It looks like a recruitment order, but it’s actually a demotion order as punishment for his crimes. This is why the scroll is made from yellow silk. How could a recruitment order use such a material? And that horse rider is clearly dressed as an imperial attendant. Hmph, this is the mural with the most flaws. After all, it’s very difficult to replace a demotion order with a recruitment order, but she managed to pull it off.”
Finally, Tang Jie reached the first mural, upon which he laughed. “But this mural is the greatest piece of trickery, and also the most laughable. Yes, this farming life wasn’t Fan Yunhai’s early life, but his later life as a disgraced general turned commoner. Surprisingly, the noble lady had not abandoned her husband, but accompanied him to his farm!”
Boom!
A clamor erupted in the hall.
The ghosts pointed at the mural. “You’re saying… the woman on the mural…”
Tang Jie grinned. “Indeed, the woman on the first mural isn’t the woman before us, but the noble woman who appeared on the sixth mural. The artist has managed to disguise it with her clothing and hair style, making us think that the first woman is the main character of this series. However, she can’t lie, so she drew the woman from the side. Still, if you look closely at the woman’s profile, you would find it to be extremely similar to the general’s wife. The artist must have been extremely unwilling as she drew this.”
He turned to the seated woman. “Was there anything wrong with my interpretation?”