The breeze of February stimulated the students’ passion for creation that had laid dormant within their hearts, promoting them to transform their ingenious ideas into brilliant articles. With the approaching of the new semester, it’s time we wrapped up the competition of Chinese Traditional Story Innovation Essay held by the English Corner @SISU

Ma Liang knew that this magical brush could bring him everything he wanted. But because of this, his life was never peaceful again.

After leaving the capital, Ma Liang returned to his hometown. He thought: the landscape of my hometown is so beautiful that I have no pursuits in this life but to paint out my hometown with this magical brush. I believe the scenery will astonish our offsprings even after thousands of years !

But just as he reached at the village, he found the magistrate who had once bullied him, was respectfully leading his servants and villagers to greet him at the entrance of the village. They organized a lively welcoming ceremony, not only asking Ma Liang to deliver a speech about his experience in the capital, but also inviting him to be the headmaster of the county school. Ma Liang had wanted to go home early to clean up the messy cave house he lived in, but the welcoming ceremony didn't end until the sun set.

The magistrate nodded his head and followed behind Ma Liang, pleading, "Master Ma, Ma Shenxian( like a god), please forgive the faults of a clown as me! My mother has in her 80s and my children still don’t know how to walk, but they are all relying on me to feed them! Please don’t punish me to death with your magic and I know that I am to blame! I kowtow to you, please spare me!" Saying that, he knelt on the ground to kowtow.

Ma Liang was already very frustrated after the journey and a day of chilling out, but he still patiently assisted the magistrate, "I won't retaliate against you, please don't fish and flesh out the people again and be a good official!" So the magistrate nodded repeatedly and left with a thousand thanks.

After Ma Liang settled down, he often went to the mountain forest behind the village to sketch. The scenery he drew was so vivid that it was even more beautiful than the utopia in Tao Yuanming's essay! But whenever Ma Liang returned home, visiting villagers filled his house. They brought many gifts to visit Ma Liang, at first they asked him to draw sickles, plows and other farming tools, then they asked him to draw fat pigs, chickens and cows, and recently they have started to ask Ma Liang to draw ripe grains that can be cooked immediately. Ma Liang could only shake his head and sigh, he was so tired of dealing with the constant stream of visitors that he had no time to go out and sketch. Every day after he returned home was an upset one.

At first, the villagers would labor hard when they were given tools, but then they gradually became lazy, and they begged Ma Liang to paint ready-made food and clothes for them. Ma Liang reluctantly agreed, but no matter how much he tried to persuade them, the villagers became more and more dependent on his magic brush and did not want to work anymore.

One day after drawing a batch of fruit tree seedlings for one of the villagers, he returned to his bedroom and caught a glimpse of the old pen container on his desk. Ah, the pen container was dusty, with a few ordinary pens stuck haphazardly inside. Once upon a time, he was very eager to get a paintbrush of his own. He wished to use it to draw on white rice paper to his heart's content. So as soon as he got the magic brush, he immediately drew a few ordinary brushes for himself. In this way, in case the magic brush suddenly disappeared, he still had the brushes available and could still continue to draw. But for so many years, he carried the magic brush with him everywhere and never touched these ordinary ones again. He knew clearly that the magic brush can bring food, fancy clothes, appreciation and honor, while these ordinary brushes can only be used for drawing.

But what I want originally is to draw with ordinary brushes.

"There's no limit to one's desires, and I'm getting farther and farther away from my original intention." Ma Liang came to a sudden realization.

Ma Liang ran to the river overnight and threw the magic brush into the turbulent river. He disappeared with his few ordinary brushes.

The villagers never saw Ma Liang again. But according to a hunter, there is a young man always paints by the side of the brook , and the village on his painting was so peaceful and beautiful that anybody who saw it would cry.