Grandmasters Ou Yangxun and Yan Zhenqing lived in seclusion,
Yang Ningshi's works can still be seen on these walls until the Northern Song Dynasty. Huang Tingjian once said: "When I went to the capital and read Yang's books between the monk walls, I was fascinated." (Ma Zonghuo's Notes on Trees and Algae, Volume 8) Unfortunately, buildings cannot be preserved forever, and these wonderful traces of his calligraphy have disappeared with the passage of time. However, there are only four kinds of paper and ink preserved, namely, Jiuhua Post in regular script, Ten Notes on Hongcaotang in running script, Xia Ruo Post in running script, Immortal Living Method in cursive script, and several seal cutting posts such as Walking empty word. Judging from these works, there are regular script, running script and cursive script, and their styles have changed. This change, on the one hand, shows his artistic skill, on the other hand, it is also the natural diarrhea of his pretentious character. The content of these posts is either about fitness, or about love affairs, or about immortal Taoist priests. None of them are serious. Why? The times have changed, and the current events in the world are unspeakable and not worth worrying about, so he has to seek pleasure in the world outside the secular world.
It is said that Yang Ningshi's calligraphy art built a bridge between the peaks of calligraphy art in Tang and Song Dynasties. As far as the development of calligraphy art is concerned, there is the Song Dynasty. As for those who have studied Yang Ningshi since then, there are many people in that generation, but few people can get the essence from it.