Fang Xiaofeng and Hu Lu bowed respectfully to Lü Bufan, gratitude filling their eyes.
Li Xiucai sighed. "Fine, fine. Consider it a favor I owe you. Fang Xiaofeng, all of you cultivate and study diligently. I'm leaving."
With that, Li Xiucai took Lü Bufan and flashed onto the raised platform. He stamped his foot and looked at the Stele Pedestal on the ground, which measured nearly ten feet across...
"Mm, very nice. It's stood facing the Three-Lives Stone stele for a thousand years, so they're a pair now. It really would be a shame to separate them! Zhou Zhengyan... lend me your paper and brush."
The disciples of Mianchi Academy filled the space below the platform. Hearing him, Zhou Zhengyan immediately took out the brush, ink, paper, and inkstone he used to practice shikigami arts and respectfully presented them.
"If you'd like to watch, come up and see... what Shikigami Puppets created through our Confucian flying-white brushwork and splashed ink should really look like! A shikigami doesn't have to be drawn as a scholar to be authentic..."
All the disciples crowded up, including the visibly excited Fang Xiaofeng, Hu Lu, and Yu Laolai, surrounding the platform at a distance to watch Li Xiucai and Lü Bufan.
Li Xiucai raised a Huzhou brush, soaked it in thick ink, and swiftly wrote and painted on a sheet of thick, pale-yellow xuan paper... His lips recited a Confucian Spirit-Communing Ode: "Heaven and earth shine manifest, sun and moon blaze resplendent. As the Great Dao moves, divine light rises from the brush! Ruoshui, like wind, the brush traces divine forms..."
His final stroke swept out, like a streak of white light rising into the air! The white light dazzled the eyes, then vanished in a flash...
Lü Bufan stared, dumbstruck, as a broad-bodied giant