Chapter 86
Translator: T_Fan
“I heard he has a wind-and-lightning dual spiritual root.”
Lu Hongyan said as she watched Zheng Yubai descend toward the martial platform.
“Wind and lightning…? He has a dual spiritual root, yet both of its attributes are mutated spiritual roots?”
“Yeah. It’s an incredibly rare aptitude. Even rarer than a single spiritual root. On top of that, he’s a Foundation Establishment Great Perfection cultivator who has brought the Qingheng Sect’s sword art to Major Attainment. I hear he has almost no equal within the same realm.”
Lee Hyun looked at Zheng Yubai’s back.
The three scabbards differed slightly in length and width. The one on the right was long and slender, while the one on the left was shorter and thicker. The scabbard in the middle was made of faded wood.
Mingyun spoke.
“Does having two mutated spiritual-root attributes make cultivation faster?”
Martial Uncle Huijing shook his head.
“No. In terms of cultivation speed alone, he is no different from any other cultivator with a dual spiritual root. And no matter how rare one’s aptitude may be, without a suitable inheritance, one might even end up worse off than an ordinary dual-spiritual-root cultivator.”
“Then the Qingheng Sect must have an inheritance suited to him.”
“Most likely. But as far as I know, that young man isn’t famous solely because of his spiritual roots.”
The old monk’s gaze lingered briefly on the weathered scabbard in the middle.
At that moment, someone on Nanming’s side also rose to his feet.
It was the young man who had been sitting beside the female cultivator holding the long sword case in the stands.
He wore a black enchanted robe bearing the emblem of the Heishui Sect and had no particularly distinctive features apart from his tied-up hair. A single long sword hung at his waist.
As he descended toward the martial platform, his name could be heard here and there.
“Situ Tian.”
“His opponent in the last match didn’t make it out alive, did he?”
“When the barrier came down, the defensive magic tool had melted. I wonder what kind of technique he used….”
At the foot of the stone steps, Situ Tian presented his jade token to the steward.
A short while later, the two men stepped onto the stone platform.
“Qingheng Sect, Zheng Yubai.”
“Heishui Sect, Situ Tian.”
They exchanged brief introductions.
Zheng Yubai raised a hand, and a blue sword slid free from the scabbard on his right.
Yuanjing exclaimed in admiration.
“That’s the Flying Wind Sword, ranked twenty-first in the Yunzhou Artifact Appraisal. Could all three swords on his back be exceptional supreme-grade magic tools?”
A thin groove ran along the center of the blade. Within it, faint currents of air trembled as though wind were flowing through the channel.
Across from him, Situ Tian drew his sword as well.
Shing.
The blade was a deep gray. Even under the light, its edge did not gleam, and winding patterns covered its surface like traces left behind after water had dried.
Seeing it, Lu Hongyan asked,
“Senior Brother Yuanjing, is that one famous too?”
Yuanjing answered.
“I’ve heard that Nanming has the Nanming Hundred Artifacts Register, which ranks exceptional supreme-grade magic tools much like the Yunzhou Artifact Appraisal does, but I don’t know much about it… Still, judging by its appearance, that’s clearly an exceptionally fine sword.”
While Zheng Yubai and Situ Tian took their positions, the Golden Core cultivators outside the martial platform checked their respective formation plates.
Hummmm―
A barrier rose between the eight pillars.
This time, the inside was perfectly visible. Not only could they see the two cultivators atop the stone platform, but even the smallest marks left on its surface stood out clearly.
The Golden Core steward looked from one man to the other.
“Begin!”
Zheng Yubai’s sword vanished.
Swoosh!
The next instant, blue light flashed in front of Situ Tian’s throat.
Clang!
The gray sword rose at an angle and knocked it aside.
A gust exploded from the point where the two swords collided. Situ Tian’s robes streamed backward, but he did not retreat.
The Flying Wind Sword, having been knocked away, changed direction in midair.
Once, twice, and on the third attack, the dust on the ground split apart to either side before the sword had even arrived.
Situ Tian twisted his body, and a sharp sword wind brushed past his shoulder. His descending gray sword knocked away the pursuing blade once more.
Clang! Claang!
Each time the swords collided, blue light scattered in a different direction.
The dispersed sword light swept around the edge of the stone platform before gathering once more behind Situ Tian.
‘Interesting.’
Lee Hyun’s gaze swept over the ground.
Thin currents of air lingered wherever Zheng Yubai’s sword had passed. The sword following behind would ride those currents, either accelerating or abruptly changing direction.
There were similarities to the technique Han Jingxiu of Qingxiao Palace had used to create air currents with his rings.
But Zheng Yubai’s sword path was far sharper.
Sword wind remained even where the blade had already passed. At times, it was difficult to distinguish from actual sword qi, making it hard for Situ Tian to judge what needed to be blocked and what could safely be ignored.
Then it happened.
As the space around Situ Tian gradually filled with blue light, blue-black energy spread across his gray sword.
Ssssss.
In the clash that followed, astonishingly, there was no sound of metal!
It sounded like a red-hot lump of iron being plunged into mud, dull and strangely wet.
When the sword light surrounding the Flying Wind Sword’s edge touched the gray blade, it dimmed and was drawn into the blue-black energy.
Zheng Yubai’s fingers moved, and the Flying Wind Sword immediately pulled back.
But a strand of dark energy remained inside the groove along the blade. Only after the wind spun fiercely within it did the energy finally break away.
Lu Hongyan narrowed her eyes.
“Martial Uncle, what is that?”
Huijing spoke quietly.
“The Heishui Sect’s Spirit-Eroding Demonic Sword Art. I heard it was an inheritance of the Way of the Sword passed down from antiquity. It certainly lives up to its reputation.”
Meanwhile, Situ Tian stepped forward and swept his gray sword once through the air.
Blue-black light spread outward like a fan, severing the air currents Zheng Yubai had left behind in several places. Deprived of the paths of wind, his sword lost much of its ferocity.
Situ Tian did not miss the opportunity. His body seemed to stretch into a blur as he surged forward at tremendous speed, thrusting his sword toward Zheng Yubai’s chest!
Claaang!
The Flying Wind Sword hurriedly blocked it.
Zheng Yubai retreated.
One step.
Then another.
The blue-black energy gathered around the gray sword stretched out in a long trail. Every time it brushed against the Flying Wind Sword, its sword light melted away.
Situ Tian pressed his opponent harder and faster, closing the distance between them with every exchange.
He knocked Zheng Yubai’s sword away, then launched another attack before the blade could regain its momentum.
Dark traces spread beneath Situ Tian’s feet as he took control of the center of the martial platform.
‘What an unusual inheritance…’
Lee Hyun observed the movements of the two cultivators.
Zheng Yubai attempted to restore the currents of wind, but Situ Tian continuously severed them while leaving more and more of his own traces across the martial platform.
Judging by the movement of his sword qi, Situ Tian seemed adept at gradually taking control of the battlefield, almost as though he were encroaching upon it.
Then the scabbard on Zheng Yubai’s left opened.
Crackle!
White lightning leapt from the mouth of the scabbard.
A sword roughly three fingers wide shot out and met the descending gray blade head-on.
Booom―
Blue-black energy scattered in every direction, and Situ Tian’s feet slid backward.
He lowered his sword tip toward the ground, and the scattered energy began gathering again. But Zheng Yubai’s two swords moved first.
The Flying Wind Sword swept low, while the sword wreathed in lightning rose upward.
A violent gust erupted between them, and brilliant white lightning exploded within it!
Rumble!
The cultivators in the stands all leaned forward at once.
Sword light curved along the gale and wrapped around Situ Tian, while bolts of lightning struck repeatedly through the gaps.
The air inside the barrier seemed to burn in an instant, filling the arena with an acrid smell. Even the stone platform trembled in tiny vibrations as though an earthquake had struck.
The blue-black energy Situ Tian had left beneath his feet began to boil away and disappear.
Situ Tian’s sword immediately accelerated.
Sword light spread from the gray blade and layered itself before him again and again. The successive bolts of lightning crashed into that curtain of sword light, tearing at it without mercy!
“He’s suppressing the devilish qi with lightning!”
At Zhang Taishan’s exclamation, Yuanjing gave a brief shake of his head.
“No. He hasn’t broken through. Unless it is legendary lightning like Supreme Wood Divine Lightning, which has an overwhelming advantage against devilish qi, merely wielding lightning won’t be enough to defeat one of Nanming’s heaven’s prodigies so easily.”
Lee Hyun had the same thought.
Long ago, when he had gotten into a dispute with Shi Zhenheng of the Azure Cloud Sect’s External Affairs Hall, the man had unleashed lightning using a magic tool called the Wind-Thunder Umbrella, yet Lee Hyun had easily cut through it with the Profound Gate Sword.
‘That cultivator must have faced lightning arts before too.’
He was a heaven’s prodigy selected and sent here by the Heishui Sect. There was no way an inheritance that collapsed the moment it encountered lightning could have brought him this far.
In the end, a cultivator’s own ability mattered more than elemental compatibility.
The fiercer Zheng Yubai’s lightning became, the more tenaciously the blue-black devilish qi rising from Situ Tian’s gray blade clung to it and swallowed it.
Crack! Craaack!
Inside the barrier, Situ Tian’s bloodshot eyes flashed.
He raised the gray sword, and the curtain of sword light curled inward. The winding patterns along the blade lit up one after another as the blue-black energy compressed into a thin layer along its edge.
The instant Zheng Yubai’s lightning sword plunged downward, Situ Tian also burst forward with no less momentum, as though the pent-up recoil within him had suddenly exploded.
Boom!
White and blue-black light erupted simultaneously from the point of impact.
Some of the lightning scorched Situ Tian’s sleeve and sent smoke curling upward, but he did not withdraw his sword.
Instead, black stains spread across the surface of the lightning sword.
Zheng Yubai hurriedly recalled it, and the lightning coiled around the blade crackled violently, blasting the stains away.
At that moment, Situ Tian kicked off the ground.
Thud!
His blue-black afterimage stretched long behind him as he shot forward.
Swoooosh!
Rather than swinging his sword at the Flying Wind Sword stabbing toward his flank, Situ Tian angled the flat of his blade and deflected it with a glancing blow.
Booom!
The deflected sword tip tore across his waist and scattered fresh blood, but Situ Tian’s advance did not slow by even half a handspan. He turned the recoil from deflecting the sword into forward momentum and surged directly in front of Zheng Yubai!
Slash!
The gray blade swept upward, staining Zheng Yubai’s left sleeve with blood.
Zheng Yubai retreated and crossed his two swords.
Lightning erupted, and a gale shoved Situ Tian backward.
Only then did the distance between them widen.
…
Blood ran down Zheng Yubai’s left arm.
He flexed his fingers once.
The swords of wind and lightning still circled around him, but their spirit light had dimmed compared to before. Controlling wind and lightning together clearly consumed no small amount of spiritual power.
Situ Tian’s breathing had also grown slightly ragged.
The arm exposed beneath his burned sleeve bore scorch marks from the lightning, and blood continued to seep from the wound at his waist.
Yet the energy wrapped around his gray sword had not diminished. It was still impossible to tell who held the advantage.
Situ Tian raised his sword and pointed it at Zheng Yubai.
Zheng Yubai reached behind him.
At last, he grasped the final sword that everyone in the stands had been wondering about!
A faint sound came from the faded wooden scabbard.
Shhk.
Murmurs of confusion spread throughout the stands.
‘A wooden sword…?’
Old-fashioned wood grain ran along the blade, and the handle had been polished smooth, perhaps from years of being gripped during training.
Unlike the first two swords, it gave off neither a noticeable glow nor even the slightest trace of spiritual power.
Mingyun furrowed his brow.
“Is that a magic tool too?”
Even Martial Uncle Huijing did not answer.
Situ Tian also narrowed his eyes in puzzlement at the wooden sword.
But there was no reason to give Zheng Yubai time when he had no idea what sort of trick his opponent might have prepared with it.
Blue-black energy swept across the ground as Situ Tian shot forward once more.
The first two swords Zheng Yubai had drawn moved simultaneously.
The Flying Wind Sword crossed to Situ Tian’s right, while the lightning sword swept across his left.
As the wind and lightning generated by the two swords interlocked around Situ Tian, a circular ring of light appeared atop the stone platform.
Situ Tian twisted his sword.
With a sudden flash, terrifying sword light erupted outward!
The circle of wind and lightning shattered instantly and scattered in all directions. Riding that momentum, Situ Tian burst through the opening.
Zheng Yubai stood before him, gripping the wooden sword in both hands.
Its tip was angled slightly downward, and blood flowing from his injured left arm had soaked the hilt.
As Lee Hyun watched, he suddenly noticed something strange.
‘His divine sense….’
The divine sense controlling the first two swords had grown thinner.
The divine sense withdrawn from them was beginning to gather in front of the wooden sword.
Zheng Yubai raised his head.
The two other swords circled back to either side of him and turned their tips forward in unison.
Blue and white light stretched out from their points.
Situ Tian raised his gray sword, and blue-black energy extended several times the length of the blade.
A single slash from where he stood looked as though it could cleave Zheng Yubai’s upper body in two.
Then Zheng Yubai raised the wooden sword.
At that instant, Lee Hyun’s eyes widened.
Between the wind and lightning, he saw the thin, translucent outline of a sword.
What surprised him was not some extraordinary quantity of spiritual power within it.
Like when forming the Spirit-Jolting Needle, divine sense had been condensed into something thin and solid, taking the shape of a sword. Yet within it flowed another energy that could not be explained by spiritual power and divine sense alone.
It felt strangely familiar….
‘Vow power?’
Lee Hyun unconsciously held his breath.
The tip of the wooden sword pointed toward Situ Tian.
Crack!
A hole opened directly through the center of the long stream of blue-black sword qi.
The cultivators in the stands felt an oppressive force descend, as though the entire martial platform had frozen solid.
Situ Tian’s eyes widened. The instant he pulled his sword back in front of himself, an ear-piercing crack rang out.
Astonishingly, Zheng Yubai’s wooden sword had done nothing more than remain pointed into the air!
All three swords were still in their original positions, yet Situ Tian’s gray blade bent violently in midair.
Situ Tian’s body-protecting spirit light swelled, and dark light burst from between his brows to protect his primordial spirit, but his right shoulder was jerked backward.
Splurt!
Blood sprayed in a long arc.
Situ Tian staggered back.
He nearly lost his grip on the gray sword, but barely managed to hold onto the hilt.
At the same time, Zheng Yubai dropped to one knee.
Crack.
A faint sound came from the wooden sword in his hand.
A fracture was spreading from the tip toward the hilt.
The stands fell silent.
Situ Tian forced himself upright, but the hand holding his gray sword trembled uncontrollably.
The only visible wound left by the strike was on his shoulder, but his sea of consciousness and meridians appeared to have been shaken as well.
By contrast, the Flying Wind Sword beside Zheng Yubai wavered but rose into the air again. The lightning sword also floated up, beginning to release a faint glow of lightning.
Situ Tian looked at Zheng Yubai and the two swords before him, then raised his left hand, which held his jade token.
Crack.
He crushed the jade token!
As the barrier dissolved, two Golden Core cultivators who had been watching from outside immediately stepped onto the stone platform.
“Qingheng Sect, Zheng Yubai, victorious!”
A brief silence followed.
Then cheers erupted from the stands!
“He won!”
“Yunzhou won!”
The final scores appeared on the wooden board in the center.
Yunzhou, 33 points.
Nanming, 32 points.
Lu Hongyan sprang to her feet.
Zhang Taishan slammed a fist against his own knee.
“He broke through it!”
Yuanjing could not take his eyes off the stone platform.
At some point, the prayer beads between his fingers had stopped moving.
Huijing spoke quietly.
“So that is the Mind Sword. Its reputation is well deserved.”
Lee Hyun turned toward the old monk.
“The Mind Sword?”
“It is a legendary level of sword attainment spoken of in the mundane world. That young man is famous because he learned what was considered the strongest inheritance of the martial path passed down through Yunzhou’s mundane world. They say one of his family’s ancestors even went beyond what the mundane world calls the Profound Realm.”
Huijing looked toward Zheng Yubai.
“I heard he had studied martial learning from the mundane world alongside his cultivation since childhood, but I never expected him to combine it with the Qingheng Sect’s sword art like that.”
On the stone platform, a Golden Core cultivator from the Qingheng Sect was taking the wooden sword from Zheng Yubai’s hand. He did not seem particularly concerned about the wooden sword itself.
It was nearly broken in half, and no matter how one looked at it, it seemed to be made from ordinary wood rather than being a magic tool.
After swallowing a pill handed to him by the Elder, Zheng Yubai put away his remaining two swords.
On the opposite side, Situ Tian was being supported by a fellow disciple.
The cloth wrapped over his shoulder wound was rapidly soaking through.
…
The cultivators nearby began excitedly discussing the final strike.
Some claimed it was simply the combined power of wind and lightning. Others insisted that the wooden sword itself must have been a special treasure. Still others grew excited at the thought that the Qingheng Sect had revealed some hidden sword art.
The scene from moments earlier replayed again and again in Lee Hyun’s mind.
The divine sense and spiritual power gathered in the wooden sword, along with that unfamiliar yet familiar energy flowing among them.
‘It was similar to creating Buddha-Light True Qi.’
He remembered when he had first learned the Buddha-Light Heart Art.
Only after adding the vow power gained through keeping his vow had the true qi of Baoguang Temple displayed its distinctive properties.
The Spirit-Jolting Needle was the same.
Simply gathering his divine sense into a thin point was not enough. Only by imbuing it with vow power could he produce the strength described in the cultivation formula.
‘Can the same thing… be done with a sword?’
Once he assumed that Zheng Yubai’s final strike had contained spiritual power, divine sense, and vow power together, things he had previously understood as separate began connecting in his mind.
‘Could what sword cultivators call sword intent be….’
Wang Shulin’s voice surfaced in his memory.
She had said that the conviction gained from keeping a vow was refined through a cultivation formula and transformed into vow power.
Then could those who spent years tempering their hearts toward the sword obtain a similar kind of power?
Even if the method differed from the vows of the Buddhist tradition, its foundation would still lie in the primordial spirit.
‘Is that why some sword cultivators become so obsessed with their swords?’
They refuse to abandon an intent once embraced, repeat the same sword path for decades, and preserve that conviction through countless battles.
If that process produced a change similar to cultivating vow power….
Lee Hyun felt a spark of excitement.
‘Then is the unyielding heart of a sword cultivator essentially similar to a vow? If so, could that be the reason sword cultivators speak of One Sword Breaks Ten Thousand Arts…?’
Cultivators who practiced inheritances of the Way of the Sword commonly believed that a sword could break ten thousand arts, and to some extent, they actually made that belief a reality.
Lee Hyun had always found that difficult to understand. Everything in the world had its strengths and weaknesses, so why should inheritances of the Way of the Sword alone be so overwhelmingly powerful?
It seemed unreasonable.
But if vow power were involved, that changed everything.
Vow power was that sort of force to begin with!
It was, in a sense, a power that defied logic, something that could be called the power of wishes or belief.
Incense-offering qi was the clearest example. The prayers of countless mortals gathered together and became part of Baoguang Temple’s strength through the same principle.
If sword intent, the force that made One Sword Breaks Ten Thousand Arts possible, truly worked as he suspected, through a vow that imposed a restriction upon oneself…
‘I see! One Sword Breaks Ten Thousand Arts might be a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. By believing that the sword can break ten thousand arts, a sword cultivator strengthens their own vow power, then refines that vow power into sword intent and uses it to break those ten thousand arts! Until they suffer defeat, the cycle can keep reinforcing itself! Maybe that’s why powerful sword cultivators are so often portrayed as stubborn fanatics or madmen.’
This differed from the usual cultivation methods of cultivators who pursued straightforward increases in strength. It was more like altering the nature of one’s power within the same major realm by pushing it heavily in a single direction.
‘When a sword cultivator’s spirit breaks and their Dao regresses, is it because their vow has collapsed?’
Fragments of knowledge he had gathered across many different fields, the Sutra of Refining Intent into Vow, the Spirit-Jolting Needle, the martial path of the mundane world, his research into spiritual power, and various other arts and skills, began converging as Lee Hyun approached a new insight.
‘Even the Mind Sword shouldn’t let someone exceed the limits of the power they’ve actually cultivated. And its release speed was only comparable to the Spirit-Jolting Needle, not anything like the speed of light. If someone trusted that one strike enough to challenge a Golden Core cultivator, they’d be in for a rude awakening.’
Lee Hyun’s thoughts continued branching outward in explosive succession.
‘Should vow power be classified as a fourth category? But considering how cultivators of earlier generations emphasized the three components of essence, qi and spirit, vow power should probably fall under spirit. Could I imbue my Great Unity Heavenly Dipper Sword Qi with vow power too? Still, I don’t want to burden myself with a restriction that makes me weaker whenever my resolve falters… I want to create a flexible sword intent. Is there a way to use the Mind Sword without establishing a vow? There must be sword cultivators who have pursued that path….’
As all those concepts flashed through his mind, he felt as though something were hovering just beyond his grasp. Lee Hyun could not even tell whether he had understood something or overlooked something crucial.
For a moment, the countless obscure phrases he had read in the past seemed to take on different meanings.
Where the heart goes, the sword follows.
If you cannot trust your sword, its point will waver.
He had always assumed they were merely sayings emphasizing the proper mindset of one who cultivated.
Of course, not all of them could be referring to actual techniques.
But some of them….
“Junior Brother Li?”
At Yuanjing’s voice, Lee Hyun turned his head.
“Yes.”
“What have you been drawing with your finger all this time?”
Lee Hyun looked down at his hand.
He had been tracing sword paths over his knee.
“That final sword fascinated me.”
“As it did me.”
Yuanjing looked back toward the stone platform.
“To think divine sense could be condensed into a sword like that. I thought I had practiced the spirit-refining method for quite some time, but seeing the methods of another sect reminds me how much there still is to learn.”
Lee Hyun hesitated for a moment before asking,
“Senior Brother, did you sense anything like vow power within it?”
Yuanjing looked back at him.
“You saw it too, Junior Brother?”
“I’m not certain.”
“Neither am I. But it did remind me of several cultivation formulas from our temple.”
He slowly rolled the prayer beads between his fingers.
“Even with the same vow power, its applications differ depending on what one cultivates and how. Whether what was contained in that sword was something of that nature or an entirely different power… we would have to seek his guidance directly to know for certain.”
Lee Hyun nodded.
…
North of the training ground stood a high platform.
The Nascent Soul cultivator from the Haiming Sect wore a satisfied expression.
Patterns of magical power appeared above the jade slip placed before him.
While the Nascent Soul cultivators from both sides confirmed its contents, the injured were carried away below and the martial platform was cleared.
The silver-haired old woman from Nanming gazed for some time in the direction Zheng Yubai had departed.
“‘The mountains of Yun have not yet grown old, and the younger generation is formidable’… Yunzhou’s mountains and rivers still stand vigorous, and its younger generation truly is formidable.”
The white-haired old cultivator from the Taiyue Sect replied,
“We merely had fortune on our side. Had the outcome of just one match been reversed, we would be saying the same thing about you.”
“Winning that one match is itself a matter of skill. Today, Yunzhou had the better of us.”
The old woman set down her teacup and looked at the Haiming Sect cultivator.
“We will abide by the agreement. The disciples of our alliance on Qingyan Island will withdraw within the stipulated period.”
“I trust in your word, fellow Daoist.”
“Hoho. I made the promise before all these people. I do have my reputation to uphold.”
When she rose from her seat, the other Nascent Soul cultivators from Nanming stood one after another.
As they exchanged courtesies, there was no particular hostility in their manner.
Watching from a distance, Lu Hongyan murmured softly,
“They settled that more cleanly than I expected.”
Huijing said,
“They came here in the first place because they wished to avoid a battle between Nascent Soul cultivators. They failed to obtain what they wanted, but this is still far from the worst possible outcome.”
The old monk looked toward the treatment hall.
“Let us take Yuanshi and return as well.”
…
When Yuanshi emerged after receiving treatment, his face was pale, but fortunately, he could walk on his own.
Zhang Taishan moved to his side.
“Senior Brother, shall I give you a hand?”
“I’m fine.”
Liu Jingdao also joined the group.
His right arm remained tucked inside his sleeve while he used his left hand to adjust his storage pouch.
Lu Hongyan asked,
“Senior Brother, did you see the final match too?”
“I did.”
Liu Jingdao gave a bitter smile.
“The female sword cultivator I fought gave me a similar feeling to that Situ Tian. Yet Zheng Yubai even managed to defeat him. I still have a long way to go.”
…
By the time they returned to the guest compound, the sun had already set.
Once inside his room, Lee Hyun first sealed the room behind its restriction.
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