The Versatile Master Artist

He instinctively wanted to put down the painting knife and switch to a pencil, trying the detailed sketch that matched his expertise.

However, his sketch level was significantly lower than his painting knife technique, not just by a star.

Using a sketch that had just stepped into the realm of a professional painter to try capturing something so complex, even Gu Weijing himself was not optimistic about the final result.

Just when Gu Weijing thought time would continue to slip away quietly like this, the little boy on the dune suddenly moved!

Countdown: fifteen seconds,

On the virtual panel, even the little remaining candle stub was already burned into wisps of smoke.

The weak flame flickered in the pathetic little pool of wax tear, ready to extinguish at any moment.

As the candlelight dimmed,

the blessing bestowed by the Muse Goddess was also waning,

the surrounding sand sea began collapsing into canyon-like crevices, pouring into the abyss like sand waterfalls, even the starry sky above started collapsing.

The image in Gu Weijing’s mind began to blur.

The Little Prince was still lying sideways, gazing at the starry night sky, except now one of his hands was hugging his knee while the other suddenly extended toward Gu Weijing.

”Hmm, is this his way of saying goodbye with a handshake?”

Gu Weijing wondered.

That wasn’t a handshake gesture.

The boy with a butterfly bow tie extended a forefinger, and the remaining evening mist around began to condense at his fingertip into a faint, silvery orb, like a twinkling star above.

In a moment of enlightenment,

before the Little Prince could speak, Gu Weijing instinctively extended his own finger in his heart.

Finally, there was no obstacle of an air wall,

Their fingertips touched at the boundary of reality and obscurity, and Gu Weijing felt a tingling current rush through his whole body.

In that moment of trance,

Gu Weijing saw a blooming rose in the gradually collapsing starry sky.

He couldn’t tell if this rose really existed or was just an illusion of the Little Prince. The moment the starlight entered their embrace, their perceptions subtly merged.

In this vast boundless world, life nestled closely to life, flowers lay askew on the earth in the gentle breeze, weaving with other flowers, and cranes seemed acquainted with all other cranes.

Only humans build their own isolation.

Sitting on the tiny planet, watching the sun rise and set, pulling out the sporadically growing baobab saplings, using the backside of a broom handle to clear the channels of lava cake-sized active volcanoes.

Day and night.

Time stood against desolation, and he was so lonely.

Until one morning, on a certain day, in a certain year, when the sun rose, a bright flower bloomed.

It was the only lovely rose on the tiny asteroid, so, inexplicably and fatefully, the moment she bloomed, he fell in love with her.

He watered the rose, sheltered her from the wind and cold, and fought with imaginary tigers conjured by Lady Rose’s imagination with her haughty orders in the air.

Meanwhile, she and he gazed at the endless night sky together,

They watched the sunset fall from the sky for the forty-third time, silently anticipating the not-too-distant time when the star would rise from the horizon for the forty-fourth time.

From the moment he fell in love with her, time regained its meaning.

It seemed to pass in just a second, yet also spanned a whole thousand years.

In this moment,

Gu Weijing felt as if something had struck him violently.

That was his flower.

Just that one exceeded all other flowers in the world.

”Because she is the one I watered. Because she is the one I kept under the dome. Because she is the one I protected with a screen. Because I removed the caterpillars from her. Because I listened to her complaints, her boasts, and sometimes even her silence. Because she is... my rose.”

”We once watched the sunrise and galaxies together.”

Mr. Tree Sloth’s warm voice rose from the depths of the sea of memories.

The words of Saint-Exupéry flowed through Gu Weijing’s heart once again, but this time it was not a fleeting sentiment, but like a heavy hammer smashing his heart to pieces.

The wooden fish sounded,

the elm bloomed.

A tear quietly welled up from the corner of Gu Weijing’s eye.

It turns out, among the vast starry sky, there was a rose that belonged to him, and he spent so much time on her, so she was something exclusive to him.

If you had once possessed such a rose,

you would also spend nights lingering in solitude, staring at the stars, reminiscing about how you gazed at the universe together, fearful and anxious that some damned goat might come from somewhere and carry her away.

”In that interstellar space, whenever I feel lost and lonely, I would look up to the sky, searching among the million unreachable stars for that one genuine star. That star, bearing my rose. It alone holds our familiar landscapes, our sunrises and sunsets, our boundless tenderness.”

The Temple of Thought completely collapsed,

The silhouette of the Little Prince gradually dissipated.

That delicate voice, sounding like a reed, echoed from the depths of Gu Weijing’s heart, creating ripples.

”Sir, do you know? Love is not about staring at each other, but about looking together in the same direction.”

5...

4...

3...

2...

1.

Gu Weijing opened his eyes,

Strictly speaking,

his eyes were never really closed, but he still felt as if he was waking up from a magnificent, fantastical long dream, slowly opening his eyelids.

At this moment,

before him, on the linen canvas, appeared a pair of eyes as well.

Those were spots of deep black, casually dabbed with the tip of the painting knife on a smudge of yellowish skin tone.

He completed all this in the final three seconds before the candle went out,

without any conscious thought,

as if guided by divine revelation from religious mythology, a voice inside told him what to do, so he naturally completed it.

Gu Weijing doesn’t even quite remember how he managed to pull out a smear of beige with the painting knife and, like a pastry chef decorating a cake, spontaneously dabbed those eyes.

What should have been an extremely hasty piece, looked ingeniously profound, capturing the essence, spirit, and magic of painting.

With exquisite color ink, the gaze was expressively lively, as if reflecting that shining star in the sky.

What seemed like two simple strokes made with a swing of the knife, Gu Weijing knew clearly,

without the Calligraphy and Painting Identification Skill,

even if given countless chances, he would not be able to dab out such profound eyes on a canvas with a hundred thousand dots.

A tear, not yet solidified, slipped from the side of Gu Weijing’s face onto the linen canvas, but he smiled gently.

”A white swan truly hatched from a duck egg.”

[Title: Little Prince on the Night Sand Dune]

[Painting Technique: Painting Knife Painting·Legendary Level]

[Emotions: Sweat and Blood]

”Sweat and Blood... it’s truly not easy.”

This time, Gu Weijing painted the cover extremely slowly, even though he had painted the same artwork once before, yet this time it took him more than twice the amount of time.

Except for a slight adjustment in the order of the color layers.

This painting knife creation is almost exactly the same in composition as the previous one.

However, no art foundation is needed, any two people can easily see the vast difference between them just by looking at the canvases placed together.

Even though 99% of the techniques in both oil paintings were carved from the same mold, that remaining 1% of inspiration was a hundred times more important than all the techniques combined.

At the moment Gu Weijing finished painting,

he even had the illusion that the boy on the dune was winking at him. The last time he felt this way was with Master Cao Xuan’s mural of the ”Buddha Worship and Protection Painting”.

Looking at the emotional evaluation section on the system panel, where finally appeared the [Sweat and Blood] comment.

Gu Weijing’s heart didn’t have the imagined excitement, but instead, it felt like the relief after an arduous climb up a snowy mountain, gasping for breath.

”I wonder if there’s still time to submit a replacement to the publisher?”

Gu Weijing thought.

He actually no longer cared much about whether the Scholastic Group would be willing to replace the cover painting.

Just like a mountaineer surmounting an untouched snowy peak, who, upon reaching the summit, does not care much about worldly financial and honorary rewards.

The exquisite scenery in front of him was already a reward.

”I might as well send it to Mr. Tree Sloth to have a look?”