Brother Cheng obediently picked up the ink stick and started grinding ink on the inkstone. After grinding, he held the paper down with one hand and wrote with the other. Being young, it was somewhat difficult for him to handle a brush as thick as an index finger, so the characters he wrote were worse than usual.
Master Xia watched him from the moment he began grinding ink, to paper holding, and then writing. His frown deepened throughout the process. It was a good thing he had come; otherwise, this child's talents would have been wasted by the Gu Family.
The movements for grinding ink were incorrect, using hands to hold the paper while neglecting the paperweight beside him, the brush held unsteadily, and the posture while writing was not correct either – it lacked the upright stature of a pine or the stability of a boulder.
The written characters were too round, totally devoid of the vigorous and elegant beauty of a dragon's dance.
