The Versatile Master Artist

Sponsoring underprivileged students to go to school is charity; researching how to raise whale sharks in a villa or building a wildlife park in Kenya, and hunting by private helicopter during a ”carnivorous season” is also charity.

In more extreme cases, it might even be that the private helicopter is paid for using charitable funds.

The day Gu Weijing asked Advisor Daisen from the Meiquan Palace Office to help set up a foundation in Little Girl Mo Li’s name, he never thought of exploiting such loopholes.

It’s easy to deceive others, but hard to deceive oneself.

He doesn’t want to engage in deceit, and the system won’t fabricate things either.

Anyway, with his small-scale private charitable funds, he doesn’t even need to hire management staff at the moment.

Currently, all expenditures are naturally 100% used for real charitable contributions.

”You’re a painter, do you really need me, a cripple, to work for you?” Uncle Ah Lai softened for the first time.

He, who once experienced a collapse of his worldview.

It’s hard to believe there are such pure people in the world, but this middle school student laid everything bare in front of him.

It made Uncle Ah Lai’s desolate heart flutter once more.

He thought of his ”Abba,” the lifelong teacher who changed the destiny of many drug orphans.

The gatekeeper’s fingers unconsciously tightened, gripping the aluminum water canister, his fingertips slowly turning white, and the hard metal kettle slowly deformed with creaking sounds, yet Uncle Ah Lai remained oblivious.

”Please don’t lie to me, really don’t lie to me. I’ve already lost too much faith in this world.”

The giant gatekeeper stared fixedly into Gu Weijing’s eyes, his tone slow and solemn.

”If... if you’re a swindler with ulterior motives, then you’d better make sure you can deceive people for a lifetime. Otherwise, whatever you want from me, I’ll take back tenfold, a hundredfold.”

”Even if I really become your assistant, I won’t do anything bad for you, kid, don’t think of using me as a thug.”

The gatekeeper warned, ”If I find out your money is used for laundering drug money, no matter how much Jasmine likes you, I’ll be the first to snap your neck. There’s still time to walk away and regret it now.”

”Alright, welcome to supervise, Uncle Ah Lai.”

Gu Weijing nodded with a smile.

”I don’t need you to be my thug; I just need you to protect me a bit. After all, Uncle, you know, there are so many bad people here. If good people don’t help good people, then life would be too hard.”

...

Gu Weijing bid farewell to the gatekeeper and asked him to help install an anti-theft door, a fingerprint lock, and a safe in his studio at the Good Fortune Orphanage during this period.

On the way home,

he finally got a chance to check the rewards waiting to be claimed from the system panel.

Gu Weijing was very much looking forward to the artistic insights of Lang Shining, the famous imperial painter of Dongxia, since he himself came from a family of Qing Dynasty imperial painters.

His great-great-great-grandfather also served at the painting academy in the Forbidden City, but he was just a third-class minor painter with a monthly salary of only seven taels of silver.

If the emperor really appreciated him, he wouldn’t have been sent to Myanmar.

Compared to someone like Lang Shining, who served through the Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong eras, with formal ranks and positions, and who was one of the most famous imperial painters in the entire Qing Court, if not Dongxia history, he was truly insignificant.

The reputation of Lang Shining,

was not solely because a foreign monk could better discern scripture.

The collision of different artistic styles often produces a fusion effect as dazzling as nuclear fusion.

Throughout history, cultural fusion has always been a crucial part of art.

No matter how vast the spatial and temporal distances, whether empires are separated by great ocean mountains, or by war or plague.

From the moment two civilizations encounter each other, the fusion of cultures begins.

Humanity has never been an island.

The fusion of artistic traditions is also much more protracted and resilient than ordinary people might imagine.

Archaeologists can see elements of Central Asian and Arab styles gradually evolving and integrating into the murals in the Valley of the Kings, Egypt.

At that time, the hundred-meter-high Great Pyramid of Giza hadn’t even begun construction, and the world’s last woolly mammoth was slowly wandering the snowfields.

People can also see Hellenistic influences in the Gandhara Buddhist art born along the banks of the Indus River.

Along the banks of the Danube River thousands of years ago, in the heart of Europe, from the remnants of silks and satins unearthed, one can imagine the European lords at that time gazing along the distant Maritime Silk Road toward the Far East, catching a glimpse of the splendor of the Golden Tang.

Composer Debussy, inspired by the renowned ukiyo-e masterpiece ”Kanagawa Surfing” by Hokusai Katsushika during the Edo Era, created the immortal musical composition ”The Sea.” When this symphony caused a sensation in Paris, Debussy sincerely used ”Kanagawa Surfing” as the cover for the movement, expressing his respect for Eastern painters.

War can destroy lives but struggles to destroy civilization.

Two thousand five hundred years ago, the invincible Alexander the Great marched eastward with his mighty army.

Legend has it that this great commander in the history of world military decided to permanently erase his enemies from the world, both physically and culturally.

He ordered his soldiers to burn the fields, sprinkle salt and thorn seeds on the scorched earth, and take away all men, women, children, and livestock.

The astrologer wizard told Alexander—”This will ensure no more human laughter, art, or poetry, only beasts and wild grass remain.”

Glorious Greece fell, the courageous Persian Empire was defeated.

Yet their cultures stubbornly survived; the Greek, Persian, and Eastern cultures... in the fierce flames of war, the different cultures from various nations intertwined like immortal vines, merging with each other, growing resiliently in salt and thorns.

Early cultural fusion often happened gradually amidst war and trade.

By the seventeenth century.

With the speed of cultural exchanges accelerating, genius artists began to actively integrate Eastern and Western cultures.

Most of these art masters created achievements that amazed the world.

Lang Shining is one of the representatives.

Gu Weijing looked at the system panel’s ”Essence of New Style Painting” and took a deep breath, then clicked to receive it.

[Item: ”Essence of New Style Painting” by Lang Shining]

[Quality: Knowledge Card]

[Special Effect: After obtaining the Knowledge Card, you will understand and comprehend its corresponding content.]

[Equipment Requirements: Chinese Painting Level 4, Oil Painting Level 4]

[Master Introduction: Lang Shining, originally named Giuseppe Castiglione, a Milanese Italian, an imperial painter, and one of the Ten Great Qing Dynasty Painters.

Lang Shining excelled at painting horses, portraits, flowers, and animals, and creatively founded the art style ”New Style Painting.” Stylistically, it emphasized the integration of Western painting techniques with traditional Chinese brushwork, which won the emperor’s favor and greatly influenced Qing Dynasty court painting and aesthetics after Kangxi.]

[Remark: Western beauty, Eastern charm, fused together, that’s my world.]

In an instant, Gu Weijing felt a court painting dressed in complex and solemn ancient garb unfold slowly in his mind.

After Elder Cao advised him to study Lang Shining’s new style painting art style, Gu Weijing watched many albums of this artist’s work.

Whether they are famous paintings stored in The Palace Museum, or works scattered overseas in the Guimet Museum, Paris, or the collection of Waseda University in Japan, they all have online digital albums.

Gu Weijing is actually not unfamiliar with Lang Shining’s new style painting style.

But with a large influx of information, the painting scroll in his mind slowly unfolded, and even every stroke of the fine-brush pen as thin as hair was vividly clear.

At that moment,

he could still feel the shock when the Qing Dynasty imperial family first saw this innovative art style.

This integrated artistic style effortlessly traversed the cultural divide between East and West, and was equally celebrated on both sides of the great ocean.

Renoir once worked as an apprentice in an Oriental pottery shop, Monet loved Eastern culture throughout his life. Compared to these artists, who were more inclined to Western thinking.

Lang Shining, although Italian, was more like an Easterner, as this artist who accompanied Eastern monarchs for half a century, had artistic and painting thoughts that were more Eastern.