Pleased to Start Over

Crossing Over Against a Transmigrator 4.4

Pleasing Start-Over Chapter 42: Arc 4 Part 4

Author: 橘子

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There was a very important festival in the beginning of the summer for the Wei Country called the Painted Lantern Festival.

When the night of the Painted Lantern Festival arrived, every family would carry a painted lantern out to partake in the festivities. All the shops on every street of the city would hang countless, beautiful painted lanterns for everyone to view.

Dignitaries would take boat rides around the lake. There would be many merchants on the lake with lanterns on their boats for the people to admire. The ones who sat on the boat rides would discuss or make comments about which lantern was better and which had the better art.

If the merchant's lantern became the focus of the year's Painted Lantern Festival, then their shops would have better business throughout the rest of the year. For this reason, merchants would put forth a lot of effort when they participated in the lantern festival. Some merchants even spend a lot of money in order to invite famous painters to paint on their lanterns. Therefore, a competitive nature had grown among the merchants' side of lanterns.

Since the court was currently divided into two political groups, the Xiao family and Prince Yong An's side, the lake was also very clearly divided.

The Xiao family's side had mostly generals and high ranking military members while Prince Yong An's side had mostly scholars and erudites. There had been several instances when members of both sides fought or argued because of disagreements. In fact, the scholars had used their words and gained the upper hand in their disputes, but were quickly beaten up by the generals. Because something fairly big had just happened, people from both sides tried to avoid each other a most as possible.

After the last rays of the end disappeared, night finally arrived. The lights from the merchants' boats were all lit up, and all the dignitaries' boats set off from the shore. Almost instantaneously, the lake that was drenched in darkness became almost as bright as the day's sky. The lanterns all twinkled like stars in the sky. It was all breathtaking.

Among all the boats on the lake, the biggest and liveliest boats were of course from the Xiao family and Prince Yong An. The top families' younger generations were sitting side by side as they drank fine wines, ate the culinary delicacies, and chatted. They would occasionally stop to comment on a passing boat if it had a good or interesting lantern.

On the merchants' side of boats, Chen Jingrui's businesses had produced the most innovative and unique painted lantern in recent years. They very easily became the focus of the Painted Lantern Festival's discussions.

In his previous life, Cheng Jingrui was a student at the University for Fine Arts. After he transmigrated, Cheng Jingrui painted several good paintings in order to show off his intelligence and wisdom. It was very rare for such young of a child to be able to draw such works. The Marquis of Guangde also wanted him to follow a famous teacher so that he could improve his talents in painting. This was only because even though the great Wei Country had great literary books, painting abilities were preferred over writing.

However, after those famous painters saw Cheng Jingrui's paintings, they all said same thing. His paintings lacked the artistic mood or a creative concept and that he wasn't suitable to learn orthodox color ink painting.

The Marquis of Guangde had thought, at that time, that it was already good enough that a child to was able to paint such great pictures. What artistic mood do you still want? Creative concept or whatever... Didn't you just have a lot of paintings? However, Governor Cheng Su didn't dare rashly offend those famous painters. Since the master painters didn't accept them, he could only leave dejected.