The first year.
Drawing on his extensive life experience and aesthetic intuition far beyond that of ordinary people, Zhou Heng earned a modest reputation in the small area around his shop.
His carvings were always distinctive, not the same old compassion motifs and prayer runes, but rather some exceedingly peculiar little things.
Sometimes it was an ice-blue bird poised to take flight, sometimes a miniature model of a star, and sometimes a strange creature that had never appeared in the "Compassion Realm." Their designs were wildly imaginative, yet so exquisite that every detail stood up to repeated scrutiny.
People jokingly called him the "fantasy carver."
Zhou Heng neither accepted nor rejected the nickname. He merely smiled and went on carving with his head down.
The second year.
Zhou Heng's reputation began to spread farther afield.
More and more people in Cixin City learned that deep in that unremarkable alley, there was a special carver who could create novel little things no one had ever seen.
Yet his revenue still failed to rise very high in the vast Cixin City, and his ranking remained outside the top 100,000.
Reputation was one thing; actual sales were another. After all, in this city, people were more willing to spend "compassion points" on practical prayer runes and compassion motifs than on an ice-blue bird that looked beautiful but served no practical purpose.
The third year.
The fourth year.
The fifth year.
Time flew.
Zhou Heng carved stroke by stroke, honing himself year by year.
His craftsmanship kept improving, his ranking slowly climbed, and his understanding of "Pattern Eye" and the "knife-carving method" gradually deepened through day after day of repetition. Yet the "ordinary truth" he sought to comprehend still seemed impossibly far away.
It was now the twenty-sixth year since Zhou Heng had