During the Liang Dynasty of the Southern and Northern Dynasties period, there was a renowned painter named Zhang Sengyou who served as the imperial court's painting master. He excelled in figure painting, genre scenes, and religious art, and had a particular passion for painting dragons. Emperor Wu of Liang, Xiao Yan, was a devout Buddhist, and whenever temples needed decoration, he would summon Zhang to paint their murals.
Once, Emperor Wu of Liang commissioned him to paint murals at the Anle Temple in the capital, Jinling. He painted four dragons, each with fierce claws and lifelike expressions, so vivid that everyone present gasped in admiration.
Someone suddenly noticed that the four dragons had no eyes and said to Zhang Sengyou, "You forgot to paint the eyes on the dragons." Zhang Sengyou replied, "I did not forget." The man assumed Zhang would add them later, but after a while, seeing him pack up his brushes to leave, reminded him again, "The eyes still aren't painted!" Zhang Sengyou smiled and said, "I cannot paint them. If I did, they would fly away."
The crowd scoffed in disbelief, finding his claim utterly absurd—how could a painting come to life? One person challenged, "If that were true, why not just paint a gold ingot whenever you're short on cash?" They insisted he prove it by painting the dragon's eyes.
"Since you don't believe me, I'll paint it. But be careful—don't let the flying dragon scare you to death!"
As Zhang Sengyou dipped his brush into the paint and finished the second dragon's eye, suddenly thunder rumbled, a fierce wind howled, and the sky went pitch black. The crowd scattered in terror. A single deafening crack of thunder split the air, and amid the roar, something seemed to soar into the heavens.
Soon after, the clouds parted and the wind ceased as the sky cleared. Everyone went to look and saw that the wall painted with dragons had cracked, leaving only two of the four dragons—the two with painted eyes had indeed vanished.
Later, the idiom "Breaking Through the Wall and Flying Away" came to be used to describe someone rising from a low position to sudden success and prominence.
Source: *Xuanhe Painting Catalogue*, Volume 1
Meaning of the Idiom: Later, the Chinese idiom "破壁飞去" came to describe how someone rises from a low position to sudden success and prominence.