NOVEL WEB Chapter 52: Cangjie Creates Human Script
Wutian didn’t immediately answer. Instead, he started muttering. “Cangjie, Cangjie.”
His eyes sharpened, and the air turned solemn. Even Cangjie, who was grateful toward Wutian, couldn’t help but quiver under that gaze. Just as quickly as the air changed, it swiftly reverted back. Wutian gave the boy a kind smile, “Cangjie, do you want to become my disciple?”
Cangjie looked up at Wutian and tilted his head. “What’s a disciple?”
“A disciple is a student that follows a master to learn,” Wutian said.
“What’s a master?”
Wutian paused slightly before answering. “A master is a teacher, companion, and parent.”
Cangjie opened his mouth, eagerness filling his eyes, but the light quickly died down. “Thank you, but I can’t be your disciple.”
“Oh? Why not?”
“Sir is not from around here, right?” Cangjie asked. He gave a bitter smile. Again, one that should have appeared on a face decades older. Although he had eye problems and could only effectively see colorful blurs, Cangjie’s other senses were quite enhanced. What the villagers said about him, he naturally knew. “I’m an unlucky star. Whoever gets close to me will have bad luck. Sir saved me. I don’t want to harm you.”
Wutian chuckled and rubbed Cangjie’s head with his palm. His warmth traveled from his palm and entered Cangjie’s body. It was an unfamiliar sensation to him, yet the warmth made Cangjie feel safe. He had only felt this way in the first few years of his life before he started remembering, one that brought a sweet yet sour feeling.
“Don’t worry about me. In terms of bad luck, you are far too weak to affect me,” Wutian said. “Don’t be disobedient. Quickly call me Master.”
Tears blurred his vision, but Cangjie still stared at Wutian. Then the tears streamed down his cheeks as the walls guarding his heart fell, and hope filled their place. “Master!”
Wutian only smiled and shifted his hands from Cangjie’s head to his back. He pulled the boy into a hug, causing the boy to cry into his chest. All the years of loneliness and other negative emotions burst out as he wailed all his grievances into Wutian’s robes.
From that day onward, Cangjie lived with Wutian. The two lived on the opposite side of the river to the village. Wutian had built a small shack fit for two out of wood. Every day, Wutian would spend time with Cangjie. He would teach the latter many things: common sense, survival, martial arts, cultivation, and, most importantly, Dao Script.
Cangjie was like a sponge, absorbing everything Wutian taught him. Wutian couldn’t have found a better student even if he wanted to. Especially when learning Dao Script, Cangjie was like a fish in water. It was as if he was born to learn it, which only verified Wutian’s conjecture. Originally, he thought the name might be a coincidence, but no more.
“Master.” With the passing of years, Cangjie was no longer that skinny boy that almost drowned. He stood over one point eight meters tall. Dressed in loose green robes and with no blemish on his features, coupled with his scholarly air, he was like an elegant orchid amidst wild flowers. Of course, the wild flowers referred to the villagers. The only thing that remained from all those years ago was the thick-rimmed glasses Wutian made for him.
After Wutian saved Cangjie, the villagers all thought he was a powerful warrior from Xuanyan’s army. They were only half right; he was actually the creator of the Martial Path.
The only reason the villagers didn’t think Wutian was an immortal was because the legends of immortals were long superseded by tales of powerful martial warriors. These ordinary humans did not want to embark on the Immortal Path, but the Martial Path.
Wutian only nodded at humanity’s enthusiasm, pleased.
“What is it, Cang’er?” Wutian asked. His gaze landed on Cangjie with fondness. He protected humanity for years, viewing them as his responsibility, but withCangjie, he treated him like a son.
“I tried teaching the Dao Script you taught me to the other villagers, but none of them can learn it,” Cangjie said. Because of Wutian’s presence, the villagers practically put him on a pedestal.
He wasn’t disgusted by the villagers’ change in attitude. Cangjie knew that he only survived his early years thanks to their kindness. Even if they looked down on him, he never said anything. If anything, he wanted to pay them for his early years. That’s why he tried to teach them Dao Script.
Wutian laughed. “Of course. Even immortals would struggle to learn Dao Script, much less mortals like them. Actually, I’m quite astounded that you were able to understand and master it before you reached the Martial Sage Realm. Usually, the lowest realm you have to be to master Dao Script is the Golden Warrior Realm.”
Cangjie furrowed his brows. “How do immortals compare to warriors?”
Wutian was a bit speechless. He slapped his forehead. He had only taught Cangjie the Eight Source Ascension, but he never told him the common sense of the Three Realms. “Immortals are comparable to warriors. An Earth Immortal is comparable to an Earth Warrior, a Sky Immortal to a Sky Warrior, and so on. Now do you understand how special you are?”
“Me, special?” Cangjie asked, pointing at himself. “Master, you’re joking again. Do you have something like Dao Script I can teach the other villagers? You’re a powerful warrior, you must know something.”
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to disappoint you,” Wutian said with a shake of his head. “In this world, there are only two scripts, Dao Script, which were formed naturally when Pangu created heaven and earth, and the Demon Script created by the Demon Preceptor.”
“Why doesn’t humanity have a script?” Cangjie asked. “Has no one thought of creating one?”
Wutian reached out and rubbed Cangjie’s head, like he did all those years ago. Cangjie didn’t reject it. No matter how old he grew, he felt he would always be a child in front of his master.
“Silly child, do you think no one has tried? Creating a unique script is not easy, especially one like you describe. Even the Demon Script is only accessible to demons. Do you know what the weakest demon is? They are comparable to Earth Warriors. Before that realm, demons are nothing more than dumb beasts,” Wutian said. “To create a script that mortals that haven’t even cultivated can read, that’s more than ten times harder, maybe even a hundred.”
“But it’s not impossible, right?” Cangjie asked. “Disciple has to try. I want to make everyone’s life better.”
Wutian laughed. “My disciple shows signs of becoming humanity’s fifth ancestor.”
Cangjie paused. “Master is boasting again. How can I compare to those revered figures?”
From that day onward, Cangjie embarked on his path of creating Human Script, but it was full of thorns and detours. Even with his master’s constant guidance, he found it extremely slow, like a snail’s crawl.
First, he attempted to inscribe a single character of Dao Script into the ground, but no matter what, the character would always deform. Confused, Cangjie asked his master why this happened. Wutian told him that Dao Script was extremely profound and ordinary materials could not record it.
Cangjie never knew, because when Wutian showed him the characters of Dao Script, they simply appeared in the air. Since that was the case, he attempted to chisel the characters into sturdy materials, like stone, but still failed. Then, he attempted to create the character using ropes and knots, humanity’s only method of recording information. However, the ropes could not accurately form into Dao Script characters.
Since physical methods could not work, Cangjie attempted to form the characters out of his inner energy, like his master had done. Alas, he could only form several strokes before his inner energy ran dry. Even if he absorbed the essence of heaven and earth to restore his inner energy, he would have to start over because his progress disappeared when his inner energy ran out.
However, he did not give up and continued to form the characters of Dao Script. The more he did this, the stronger his cultivation became, and without knowing it, Cangjie reached the Sky Immortal Realm. In that realm, he could barely form a single character with his entire inner energy reserve.
When he tried to show it to the other villagers, they couldn’t even recognize it. If they stared too long, they would get headaches. After asking Wutian again, Cangjie learned that a mortal’s soul was too weak to observe Dao Script. Their brains could not handle the sheer amount of information in a single stroke. If they forced themselves, not only would it fry their brains, but it would also injure their souls.
From Wutian’s words, Cangjie grasped a hint of inspiration. Since Dao Script had too much information, why not simplify it?
So, Cangjie started another attempt. Through his years of learning to write Dao Script with his inner energy, his understanding of Dao Script reached perfection, but that didn’t mean he could simplify it. Whenever he tried to form a single stroke, it would contain countless meanings. More than that, it felt incomplete and ugly, something that irked Cangjie to no end.
He toiled away, unwilling to give up. After a decade, Cangjie’s appearance had drastically changed. His skin had turned bloodless from all the years without sunlight. His eyes had sunken in, and the whites of his eyes turned red from sleep deprivation. Yet, Cangjie found himself no closer to his ultimate goal.
If learning to write Dao Script using his inner energy was at a snail’s pace, his current pace of simplifying Dao Script could only be measured in femtometers. Cangjie suspected that he needed to increase his cultivation in order to increase his speed. He was already a Profound Warrior, but he didn’t know how long it would take for him to reach the Golden Warrior Realm. But by then, the villagers who took care of him would have already turned to bones. He wanted to create Human Script so they could enjoy it.
“Cang’er, take a break,” Wutian said, sighing at Cangjie’s obsessiveness. He didn’t even look like a living human now, more like a walking corpse. Although he still looked young, the villagers became terrified of him, almost not recognizing him. Even the matchmakers no longer bothered Wutian, no longer wanting to wed Cangjie to one of the village girls.
“Master, I can’t stop, I have to finish this,” Cangjie said without looking back.
“I’m not stopping you, but you’ve clearly reached a dead end,” Wutian said. “Life is like cultivation. You can’t grow stronger by secluding yourself. Your life has been limited by this small village. Go and take a walk around humanity’s territory. You need to understand humanity more. Perhaps, you’ll gain inspiration.”
Cangjie lowered his arm, and the incomplete Dao Script disintegrated into the essence of heaven and earth. “I understand, Master.”
He didn’t immediately set off, but took a good rest first. When he woke up, his eyes were no longer sunken in or red. Although his skin was still pale, he looked much less sickly. Before leaving, he bid farewell to the villagers, since he didn’t know when he would come back.
When he returned, all these familiar faces might not be around anymore. Although it brought heartache, he had regained a clear mind after resting. Instead of going crazy, he did his best to make the villagers comfortable or make up any regrets they had. Only then did he set off.
Cangjie didn’t fly despite having the power to do so. No, he walked, like an ordinary mortal.
Along the way, Cangjie experienced many things, both the height of the goodness of humanity and the depth of their depravity. When he stopped by a large city and spent a few days as a beggar, many people contributed food to him. Even some of the other beggars, who did not have much, shared with him if he did not receive any donations.
Just as light and darkness are two sides of the same coin, where humanity had good, it also contained evil. A wealthy merchant welcomed him with a sumptuous banquet. However, the merchant was a psychopath who liked to drug travelers. Once drugged, he would lock them up in his basement and torture them until they died, and then he would claim the traveler left. Everyone thought he was a philanthropist.
That was just one among many stories Cangjie experienced. Although he had been an adult for years, under Wutian and the villager’s care, he had retained his childhood innocence. Now, he had shed that last hint of naivety and truly matured.
If Wutian saw Cangjie now, he would sigh with a sour feeling in his heart, like a parent seeing his child grow up.
One day, Cangjie passed by a hunter kneeling on the ground. Curious, he walked up and asked. “What are you looking at?”
The hunter looked up, surprised by Cangjie’s clean robes that didn’t fit with the forest. Still, he couldn’t help but involuntarily feel a sense of goodwill toward him, so the hunter answered, “I’m observing these tracks to find my target.”
Cangjie looked down and saw a bunch of footprints mixed together. “You can tell which belongs to which animal?”
The hunter nodded proudly. “See here? This is the footprint of a rabbit. Judging from the depth and size of the footprint, it must have grown big and plump. No wonder a fox would want to chase it. I’m trying to judge whether the fox captured the rabbit or not, so I can decide if I want to pursue it, too.”
“You must be very skilled to be able to tell all this from some footprints,” Cangjie said. The village he grew up in didn’t have any hunters. Most of them were farmers and sent their harvest to the city, sometimes bartering some meat back.
“Ehehe.” The hunter blushed and rubbed his head. “It’s nothing. All the hunters know it, too.”
“So every hunter who sees this will know it’s from a rabbit and fox, huh,” Cangjie said, staring at the footprints with interest. The more he stared, the more solemn became. Just as the air turned tense, and the hunter became nervous, Cangjie smiled.
“So that’s it. I was too focused on Dao Script,” Cangjie said. Then he laughed. He looked at the hunter and said, “Thank you, you helped me tremendously. If we have fate, let’s meet again in the future.”
With those words, Cangjie walked off into the distance. From that day forth, Cangjie no longer tried to simplify Dao Script, nor did he only observe humanity. Instead, he traveled the entire world, observing all things. The first things he observed were animals and their footprints. After recording and memorizing everything, he moved on to plants. By chance, he even found a copy of Sovereign Shennong’s Myriad Herb Canon. He didn’t stop there as he observed the sun, moon, stars, clouds, lakes, rivers, oceans.
When he felt he had observed everything that was in the world, Cangjie returned to the village where he was born. Thirty years had passed.
Cangjie first visited his master, who had not aged a day. Then he visited the villagers. The older generation had died, and those in his generation and younger already had grandchildren. At this point, Cangjie still looked like a young man in the prime of his life, creating a stark contrast.
His master endlessly teased Cangjie after a few people proposed to have him marry the unwed ladies of the village. According to Wutian, Cangjie was “an old cow attempting to eat tender grass.” This caused Cangjie to stay on the other side of the river, not daring to visit for several days.
After a period of rest, Cangjie started to use everything he learned during his thirty years of travel to create Human Script. He drew everything he saw on his travels using basic strokes to make symbols. The sun was just a circle, and the crescent represented the moon. A single horizontal stroke represented one, two strokes represented two, and three strokes represented three. Animals and plants were drawn based on their footprint or shape.
What troubled Cangjie the most were the characters for nondescript subjects, such as love and veneration. He racked his brain and persevered. Ten years later, Cangjie wrote the last character for the final words. He had accomplished what he set out to do.
Black clouds gathered above Cangjie, and the sky darkened. Cangjie looked up with a solemn expression. He stood in a field of dirt filled with symbols, the characters of the Human Script he wrote. Each text written on the ground started to glow with silver light and solidified. They rose from the ground and surrounded Cangjie like a protective barrier, their light glowing brighter and turning more solid by the passing second.
Lightning streak across the clouds like countless tiny snakes. The clouds roared as its momentum increased. Finally, Cangjie opened his mouth. It was time for Human Script to reveal its existence to the Three Realms. “The Way of Heaven above, I, Human Cangjie, see that humanity is without its own words, so I observed heaven and earth as inspiration and formed text to represent all things in the world. With Human Script, even non humans can understand it and a profound cultivation base is not needed. Human Script benefits all life!”
With Cangjie’s declaration, the first bolt of lightning descended. The heavenly tribulation had begun.
Cangjie’s text automatically formed a defensive barrier to block the lightning bolt. The struck text dimmed, but their light never extinguished. When the first bolt of tribulation lightning lost all its power, the other text around it glowed, restoring the dim text's luster.
Then the second bolt arrived. The text quickly shuffled, so a barrier formed fresh text and blocked the lightning, allowing the first wave to rest. In all of this, Cangjie stared up, unwilling to look away. Determination filled his eyes as he stood his ground, despite knowing that a single bolt could extinguish his life.
As the tribulation continued, every major power in the Three Realms sensed it. They sighed at humanity’s foundation. Once Human Script came into being, humanity’s Karmic Luck would become thicker, and their status as protagonist of the world would become even more unshakeable.
Luya from the Heavenly Realms stared down at the ongoing tribulation. Solar Truefire burned in his eyes, showing his inner wrath. “Benefit all life? Damn plagiarizer. The world already has Demon Script. There’s no need for Human Script to come into being!”
He wanted nothing more to descend and disrupt the heavenly tribulation and kill the human, but a sense of crisis filled him with dread. He shifted his gaze and saw humanity’s Martial Ancestor staring dangerously at him. Luya gritted his teeth and looked away.
Sitting in the capital of the Nether Realm, Empress Pingxin gazed up. Her knuckles turned white as her grip on the armrest tightened. If Cangjie succeeded, humanity itself would benefit, that included Chiyou and the Jiuli Tribe. But Xuanyuan and his forces would receive a much larger portion of the benefit, tilting the war even more in their favor.
How could Empress Pingxin watch it happen? Just as Empress Pingxin’s qi started to rumble, three auras locked onto her. They were Supreme Purity Tongtian, Jade Purity Yuanshi, and Grand Purity Laozi. Her qi instantly settled, like still water.
Empress Pingxin closed her eyes, and no longer made any action. Only then did the three auras disappear. When they left, her hands crushed the armrest from how tightly she gripped it. “Do you think Xuanyuan will win with just this? No, it will be Chiyou who wins.”
Atop of Mount Sumeru, Jieyin and Zhunti shared a smile. The brief confrontation between the Three Purities and Empress Pingxin naturally could not escape their eyes. They also didn’t want Chiyou to win, but rather than confront Empress Pingxin and form an enmity, why not allow the Three Purities to be the object of ire? After all, it’s not like their addition would change anything.
Zhunti sighed. “Senior Brother, although Empress Pingxin’s goal won’t succeed, most of humanity’s Karmic Luck has little to do with the West.”
“Have patience, Junior Brother,” Jieyin said as he closed his eyes and recited a few verses. “The East has monopolized most of the benefits from the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors. Even if we teach one of the five emperors, the West’s influence will not last because that emperor is not that last one.”
“Speaking of this, I’m quite envious,” Zhunti said. “Redcloud Ancestor gets to teach two. He might even give one position to Zhen Yuanzi.”
Jieyin sighed. “Instead of envying them, we should prepare for the future. The prosperity of the East will eventually diminish and flow to the West. We must perfect our path and sutras to capitalize on that moment.”
“I understand,” Zhunti said. He closed his eyes and brought his palms together. Golden light radiated off his and Jieyin’s body, bathing the entire mountain. The members of the Liberation Sect continued to recite the scripture, causing the light to intensify even more. It was a pity that the golden light did not reach the East.
Cangjie opened his mouth and expelled a turbid breath. Sweat coated his entire back. His hairpin had slipped off and his hair was in disarray. Scorch marks littered his robes and soot covered his skin, but his eyes were unprecedentedly bright.
The black tribulation clouds disappeared and in their place, golden clouds of merit appeared. The major powers, who were present when Demon Script came into being, showed shocked expressions because Human Script summoned over ten times the amount of merits than Kunpeng’s Demon Script.
Forty percent of the merit merged with the text, directly elevating them to top-grade innate meritorious artifacts, a whole level above the Demon Script Kunpeng created. It absorbed sixty percent of the merit at that time, but it could only become a top-grade acquired meritorious artifact.
Twenty perfect fell onto Cangjie. He didn’t absorb it to increase his cultivation base upon recalling Wutian’s reminder. The merits condensed behind his back into rings of flowing text. Despite that, his cultivation still rose to the Golden Warrior Realm, but he was not reliant on merit to cultivate like the first three ancestors of humanity.
Thirty percent fell onto Xuanyuan’s territory. None except Xuanyuan and Xuanyi sensed the merits, but every human bathed under it instantly comprehended Human Script. Future humans would not enjoy this blessing and have to acquire the skill through learning.
The last ten percent fell onto the humans of the Jiuli Tribe. Unlike the humans under Xuanyuan, they ignored it and pegged it as a useless ability.
“Master!” Cangjie said in excitement when Wutian appeared in front of him. “I did it! I created the Human Script!”
“I know, and I’m proud of you,” Wutian said. He raised his arm and patted Cangjie’s shoulder. He could no longer treat him as a child. Then, Wutian’s gaze turned serious. His voice echoed throughout the Earthly Realm. “I am Wutian, the Martial Ancestor of Humanity. Today, I announce the birth of Humanity’s fifth ancestor: Text Ancestor Cangjie!”