Chapter 50: Overnight Sensation: The Internet's Youngest Calligraphy Master

This brush-and-ink display spanning time and space triggered tremors that reached far beyond the Great Tang.

The Eastern Jin time-space.

Kuaiji Shanyin, Lanting.

Winding stream, floating cups.

A gathering of literati and refined souls.

Wang Xizhi sat upright on his mat.

Canjuan Paper was spread on the desk, his hand gripping a brush made of rat whiskers.

He had just finished drafting the Preface to the Poems Collected from the Orchid Pavilion.

The Sky Screen lit up.

Wang Xizhi looked up, his gaze firmly fixed on that short video.

He did not look at the characters, but only at the subtle movements of the wrist.

"Lifting the brush like flight, setting it down like a mountain..." Wang Xizhi murmured to himself.

He set down the rat-whisker brush.

He stood up and traced a shape in the empty air with his right hand.

Imitating the brushwork method of that young child on the Sky Screen.

"The method of Feibai Script began with Cai Bojie."

"Extremely difficult to master; a single slip turns it into withered ink and dead trees."

"Yet this child's wrist strength can forcefully suppress the brush tip, keeping the turn and twist perfectly centered, always maintaining power from the middle of the brush."

"A prodigy... a prodigy unseen in a thousand years!"

The famous scholars of the Eastern Jin around him put down their cups one by one and looked up to watch.

"Youjun, how does this child's brushwork compare to your own Xianzhi?" someone asked with a laugh.

Wang Xizhi shook his head, his expression solemn.

"When Xianzhi was four, his wrist strength was far inferior to this."

"This child can already use the brush tip at will, creating momentum by splitting the bristles."

"Between the lines of the characters, there shines an air of nobility that looks down upon the world."

"This old man is not equal to it, nor is Xianzhi."

The Great Tang, a time-space several decades later.

Yan Zhenqing stood inside his study.

He was famous throughout the world for his robust and broad Kai script.

Gazing at the majestic Feibai Script on the Sky Screen, Yan Zhenqing's hand, which was grinding ink, stopped.

"Such hard bones, such a broad chest," Yan Zhenqing stroked his beard and praised.

"The characters reflect the person; though this child writes Feibai, the skeleton is extremely upright."

"Between the horizontal and vertical strokes, there hides a momentum of thunder and ten thousand thunderbolts."

"Though later generations may have iron dragons flying in the sky and Glazed Ware greenhouses."

"I originally thought they had abandoned these tedious brush, ink, paper, and inkstone."

Yan Zhenqing raised his head, his eyes full of gratification.

"Seeing this child copy calligraphy today, I now know the cultural lineage of our ancestors has not been broken."

"That brush can still, on the white paper of later generations, write out a spirit that startles heaven and earth and moves gods and ghosts."

Calligraphy masters and literati of every dynasty.

Whether it was the wild cursive of Zhang Xu, or Song Huizong's slender gold script of later generations.

At this moment, all were deeply subdued by the Feibai Script of this four-year-old girl on the Sky Screen.

A modern apartment.

Inside the study.

Lin Xuan did not know that his casual filming had stirred up such a huge wave in ancient times.

"Alright, that's enough writing for today."

"Go wash your hands; I'll go cook." Lin Xuan cleared the paper and brushes from the desk.

Xiao Sizi put down the brush, jumped off the wooden chair, and ran toward the bathroom with tiny steps.

The night was deep. The autumn rain outside the window had completely ceased.

Lin Xuan turned off the study light, took Xiao Sizi to wash up, and they each returned to their rooms to rest.

That short video titled "Four-and-a-half-year-old child copies Feibai" was thrown into the platform's massive data pool.

For the first two hours, the data showed no waves.

Only a few scattered likes, and several mocking comments questioning "staged photos" and "adult ghostwriting."

Two in the morning.

The Algorithm mechanism in the platform's backend captured the underlying tags of this video.

The completion rate was extremely high, and the screen dwell time was abnormal.

The Algorithm began to exert its force.

The video was packaged and precisely pushed to user groups interested in calligraphy and Chinese classics.

Jingcheng.

Inside a study in a certain high-end residential district.

Zhang Yuanshan, Vice President of the National Calligraphy Association, leaned back in his chair wearing reading glasses, scrolling through his Mobile Phone.

The screen flashed, landing on a video posted by Lin Xuan.

Zhang Yuanshan glanced at the title and snorted coldly.

"Seeking attention! A four-and-a-half-year-old suspending the wrist to write Feibai? A few old men in today's calligraphy circle wouldn't dare utter such nonsense."

Just as his thumb prepared to swipe up, his gaze was hooked by the wolf-hair brush paused on the Xuan paper in the frame.

The posture of holding the brush left no flaw whatsoever.

Zhang Yuanshan sat upright.

He double-tapped the screen to pause.

He saved the video and imported it into the professional frame-by-frame playback software on his Mobile Phone.

Pinching two fingers to zoom in on the image, he stared dead at the extremely tiny instant where the brush tip touched the paper surface.

One frame, two frames.

Under the pressure of immense wrist strength, the wolf-hair brush split apart; ink seeped into the fibers of the Xuan paper, pulling out several crisp, clean white streaks.

No gaps from video editing, no dropped frames from post-production acceleration.

This was a genuine, direct recording from the original camera.

Zhang Yuanshan took off his reading glasses and rubbed his dry, aching eye corners.

"Such wrist strength, such stability in center-tip brush movement..."

Staring at the young child on the screen whose side profile was only partially visible, he said, "The brush momentum is continuous, the bone and flesh are evenly balanced."

"I have practiced calligraphy for sixty years, yet I am not as good as a little girl?"

He swallowed a mouthful of saliva.

He forwarded the video to a WeChat group named "Quanshuo Lishi".

He typed a line: "Everyone, take a look after you wake up; the calligraphy world has produced an extraordinary little monster."

That night.

Through the reposts of several giants in the industry, the video exploded like a deep well within the calligraphy circle.

Subsequently, the barriers of the circle were breached by massive traffic.

The video surged to the top of the recommended hot list.

The data showed a geometric explosion.

The next morning.

Sunlight pierced through the clouds, spilling into the master bedroom.

Lin Xuan rolled over.

The Mobile Phone on the nightstand emitted a continuous "buzzing" vibration sound.

He reached for the Mobile Phone, and the screen lit up.

The lock screen interface was completely occupied by dense notification messages.

Lin Xuan frowned and tapped to open that short-video software.

The moment the opening screen appeared, the Mobile Phone even lagged for two seconds.

Above the message bar, the like count displayed an extremely exaggerated number: 3.12 million.

Comment count: 450,000.

Lin Xuan sat up from the bed.

Leaning his back against the soft headboard, he opened the comment section.

Top comment, with 400,000 likes: "I'm reporting this; it's definitely fake. This is clearly Li Shimin reincarnated, forgetting to drink Meng Po soup!"

Second top comment: "A sports student who has practiced calligraphy for twenty years passing by. After watching the video, I snapped all the Hu brushes in my house; I am not worthy to hold a brush."

Third top comment: "The youngest calligraphy master on the entire net! The dominance of this brushwork scrapes the face even through the screen; accept my knee-bow!"

In the private message list, there were only glaring red dots.

"Hello, I am the director of Xingmang MCN. We want to sign the child; a guaranteed annual salary of five million, with full-network matrix incubation."

"Hello, Mr. Lin, I am from a certain children's clothing brand. We hope to have the little master wear our clothes while writing; the slot fee is negotiable."

Lin Xuan looked at these offers with a blank expression.

The numbers were huge, extremely tempting.

But he only felt annoyed.

Traffic is a double-edged sword.

He filmed the video to leave a file proving Xiao Sizi's extremely high value, to add leverage when obtaining an identity document in the future.

Stuffing a four-and-a-half-year-old Tang Dynasty princess into a live stream to act alongside those internet celebrity agencies for selling goods?

Absurd.

Lin Xuan's fingertips tapped quickly on the screen, entering the account settings.

He turned off private messages from non-followers and turned off mentions in the comment section.

He cleanly and decisively cut off all channels for commercial monetization.

He pushed open the bedroom door and walked into the living room.

Xiao Sizi was already awake.

She wore a pale yellow long-sleeved nightgown and was lying on the coffee table, flipping through the primary school textbooks bought yesterday.

Lin Xuan walked over and sat down beside her.

"Don't look at it; let me read something to you." Lin Xuan handed over the Mobile Phone screen.

"What is this?" Xiao Sizi shifted her gaze from the book.

"Last night, I posted the video of you writing to the internet of the future."

"In a single night, three million people saw your writing and pressed 'like'."

Xiao Sizi's eyes widened, her small mouth slightly open.

"Th... three million people?"

She was extremely sensitive to this number.

A million-strong army of the Great Tang could sweep the entire world.

"Yes, three million people."

Lin Xuan opened the comment section, selected a few professional critiques, and read them aloud.

"This one, signed by Zhang Yuanshan: 'The structure is perfectly upright, capturing the divine spirit of the royal Feibai style. In the lifting, pressing, pausing, and stopping, there lies the momentum of a thousand thunderbolts.'"

"And this one: 'The handwriting reflects the person; this little girl's steadiness of mind far surpasses that of ordinary people.'"

Listening to these comments, Xiao Sizi's cheeks gradually flushed with a rosy hue.

She lowered her head, her hands twisting the hem of her nightgown.

Yet her lips could not help but curl upward.

"Hehehe... hehehe..."

"They... understand Father's writing."

Xiao Sizi's smile was pure and clear, filled with genuine joy.

Click to begin the wondrous journey of "The Sickly Little Sizi Knocks on the Door, and I Become the God of Ten Thousand Dynasties."