This critical essay examines the practice of the contemporary mountain and water painter Zhang Cangjian. The author describes Zhang’s landscapes as both a material and a spiritual state of “gathering things”, in which brush and ink communicate with an inner, unrestrained spirituality rather than merely representing objects. Zhang is presented as an artist who fragments and reassembles mountains, using a “banded schema” of stacked strips, dense ink blocks and interwoven colour, particularly blue, to separate and redirect perception, so that clouds and mists advance layer by layer and lead the viewer toward an uncertain, unknown territory. Works such as Valley of Wind, Longyin Temple and On the Lake are discussed as examples of this repeated deconstruction and reconstruction. The essay situates Zhang within a lineage running from Jing Hao, Guan Tong, Dong Yuan and Juran to Huang Binhong, whose principles of dense and sparse composition he reinterprets, stressing that painters should learn the methods of the ancients rather than imitate their traces. Finally, drawing on Li Rihua’s notion of “ignorance” and Zhang’s extensive travels across Asia, Europe and America, the author argues that his painting embodies a double uncertainty, moving from tradition toward a personal, self-negating creative path.