This essay reads Jing Hao’s Bifaji (Notes on Brushwork), the treatise written by a recluse of the Taihang Mountains in the Five Dynasties period, through the landscape practice of the contemporary painter Lin Haizhong and his repeated journeys to the same mountains. The author first argues that, despite debates over its authenticity, the Bifaji is a pivotal text for the language of brush and ink, and that its core value is “truth” (zhen). Drawing on Daoist, Confucian, Chan and Neidan sources, truth is interpreted as the union of qi and matter, attainable only through a self-cultivation that frees the painter from desire; qi and yun then appear as expressions of the artist’s moral and spiritual disposition. The second section traces the “four potentials” of the brush (sinew, flesh, bone and breath) back to calligraphy theory from the Han to the Tang and to the principle that calligraphy and painting share one brushwork, presenting brushwork as a discipline of body and mind. The third section discusses “thought”, “scene” and the “four qualities”. Lin Haizhong’s idea that “brushwork is ink and ink is brushwork” is presented as a development of Jing Hao’s theory and a path to another modernity within Chinese tradition.