novelraw Chapter 18 : Chapter 18
Chapter 18 : Chapter 18
Chapter 18
A Sword Domain—this ability required not only a cultivator’s own cultivation, but also an exceedingly high level of attainment in the sword Dao.
Only someone whose cultivation had reached the perfection of the Seventh Layer of the Tianji Realm, and who had also achieved complete clarity in at least one sword Dao, could construct a Sword Domain.
The more sword Daos one had brought to full clarity, the more complete the Sword Domain one could build.
Xie Jingfei had once seen his master’s master’s Sword Domain.
Within it, his master’s master’s sword intent was as heavy as mountains, manifesting as continuous ranges of peaks and rivers that pressed down upon everything.
With a mere thought, his master’s master could alter anything inside the Sword Domain.
A Sword Domain was different from an Illusion Realm.
Everything they had just experienced had not been a false image produced by bewildered senses and divine sense—it had truly happened.
However, within a Sword Domain that encompassed sword Daos such as illusion and reality, birth and death, everything lay within the Sword Domain master’s single thought.
If the master willed what had just occurred to be illusory, then they would be standing here perfectly fine.
If the master willed it to be real, then they truly would have lost their lives.
Yet even inside his master’s master’s Sword Domain, Xie Jingfei could still sense the abnormality.
It was a realm utterly different from heaven and earth—a domain where everything that manifested was limited by the cultivator’s own comprehension.
What they had just undergone, however, had been so real that it was almost no different from heaven and earth itself. Birth and death, illusion and reality…
Whose sword intent could be so vast, so broad as to contain the world?
“Since that Demonic Cultivator intends to extract and refine the earth’s qi, why did he not choose a place with few people? Why pick here instead and alert so many people to come stop him?” Shuang Wenlü lightly tapped the hilt of his sword and asked again. Yu Meng lowered her eyes in shame.
“We were wrong.”
They had only thought that the Demonic Cultivators would use evil techniques in order to search for the Blood-Rust Blade.
They had not realized that they themselves were also obstacles to the Demonic Cultivators.
They had clung to the stereotype that Demonic Cultivators always acted alone and distrusted one another, never imagining that Demonic Cultivators would unite to eliminate them.
“That does not count as being wrong. It was negligence,” Shuang Wenlü said. “But negligence can still cost lives.”
Xie Jingfei nodded.
“We will remember it. We will never dare to be so careless again.”
At that moment, his expression was very strange.
Beyond unbearable shame, there was also a trace of excitement.
And beneath that excitement, there was an urge to die of embarrassment.
At this point, if he still could not guess who the person before him was, he would be an idiot.
Just thinking about the things he had blurted out over the past two days… Shuang Wenlü glanced at him.
“Why are you nodding? They came to Suizhou to do a task. Did you also come here to do a task?”
Xie Jingfei’s face turned red in an instant.
Disciples of the various sects were free to accept whatever merit tasks they wished, and it was not their responsibility.
But Xie Jingfei was the duty officer currently stationed in Suizhou.
This matter had been his responsibility from the start.
Even if his cultivation was not enough, he should have reported it in time to the seniors of the Sword Pavilion who were permanently stationed in Suizhou.
For the others, it had been negligence.
For him, it had been wrong.
“Still, this cannot be blamed entirely on you. There have been almost no Sword Pavilion disciples in Suizhou lately. Everyone ran back to the Sword Pavilion because of the Sword Sovereign,” Shuang Wenlü said calmly.
Xie Jingfei answered carefully, as if walking on thin ice.
“Y-yes… The Sword Sovereign has come out of seclusion. Everyone longs to return, hoping to see him once.”
“Yes.” Shuang Wenlü sighed. “So this cannot be blamed on everyone. It should be blamed on the Sword Sovereign.”
Xie Jingfei was so frightened that he dropped to his knees on the spot.
Though he was tall, he suddenly looked a full head shorter.
“If you say that, this disciple… this disciple…”
“Get up.” Shuang Wenlü took one look at his expression and knew that if he continued, he would scare the boy out of his wits.
“That sword strike just now was not bad.”
With that, he rose to his feet.
The cultivators around them, who had just walked through life and death, were already beginning to wake one after another.
Shuang Wenlü could not be bothered to deal with them.
He walked toward the place within the Sword Domain where the cultivators were still fighting and dying.
That fall was more than enough for them.
Heaven and earth had changed, and petty evils were stirring.
The Demonic Cultivators wished to use this opportunity to remove the orthodox cultivators in Suizhou.
That only made it more convenient for Shuang Wenlü to purge them in one sweep.
Shuang Wenlü strolled forward unhurriedly.
Within the Sword Domain, the orthodox cultivators fell unconscious without realizing anything. One Demonic Cultivator after another had their hearts shattered by sword intent and collapsed with no resistance.
When he reached a certain spot, his pace did not change, yet a female cultivator in a bright green hemp skirt was shaken up from beneath the earth.
She was delicately beautiful, and her body radiated a vitality that made anyone who saw her feel a spontaneous sense of joy.
She was also a notorious figure among Demonic Cultivators, known as Madam Seedborn.
Those strange seeds that rooted into people on contact had all been her handiwork.
If one did not know her true nature, merely seeing the pleasing life force around her might lead one to mistake her for an orthodox cultivator of the same path as Medicine King Valley.
Madam Seedborn collapsed on the ground, pitiful and fragile.
She looked up at Shuang Wenlü, her eyes moist and lively. “I…”
“Using people as fields, to plant and harvest your vitality. An excellent idea,” Shuang Wenlü said, looking down at her with an indifferent gaze.
Madam Seedborn stared at him in disbelief.
The sword tip swept across her throat, severing her vitality and picking out a green-blue seed of light.
All the vitality she carried had been stolen by harvesting the seeds she planted in others.
Shuang Wenlü neither quickened nor slowed a single step as he walked past Madam Seedborn and moved on to the next person.
The Huntian Old Demon still gripped his Huntian Cup.
A shallow mark marred its surface—left behind by Xie Jingfei. Even though he had withdrawn the artifact’s power in time, it had still been scratched.
Xie Jingfei’s sword strike had indeed been good.
The Huntian Old Demon stared at Shuang Wenlü in horror.
To everyone else, Shuang Wenlü’s footsteps had been leisurely from the beginning.
But to the Huntian Old Demon, this person had drifted into view out of nowhere, and he had no idea when he had arrived.
“You are…”
“A single cup contains heaven and earth within and without, and by refining all things they become yours?” Shuang Wenlü lifted his hand.
A strand of sword aura had already fallen into the Huntian Cup, as if to let it refine something for once.
The Huntian Cup claimed it could refine all things, yet it had no way to deal with this clear sword intent, as transparent as moonlight.
Sword light like a full moon spread from within the cup—bright and pure. It carried not the slightest harsh edge, yet it illuminated the Huntian Cup until it seemed to dissolve into light itself, shattering without leaving a trace.
“…Who?” The Huntian Old Demon never received an answer.
Like the Huntian Cup, he crumbled into the moonlight.
Shuang Wenlü moved his fingertip and caught a shifting, multicolored light.
All the Demonic Cultivators here had been executed.
The Sword Domain closed just as silently as it had opened.
Shuang Wenlü’s back vanished from sight, and Xie Jingfei was still grinning foolishly.
“What are you smiling about?” Yu Meng asked.
“Ance—” Xie Jingfei glanced at the cultivators waking around them and swallowed the last word.
“He praised my sword strike just now! He even instructed me!” That strike he had used to split the Huntian Old Demon was the sword intent he had been teaching.
Yu Meng could not bear to look at his idiotic expression.
“How do you plan to explain what happened here?”
“We will say that a senior stationed in Suizhou took action,” Xie Jingfei said.
The Grand Patriarch had never revealed his identity from beginning to end, so he could not leak the news.
Yu Meng saw that he still looked foolishly delighted and reminded him, “All right, stop grinning like an idiot before others notice. Why are you this happy?”
“I am happy that you are all right, too,” Xie Jingfei said, smiling at her.
Yu Meng could not help rolling her eyes at him.
Seeing him still smiling, she could not help lifting the corners of her lips as well.
On the other side, Shuang Wenlü chose a quiet place and looked at the two “Golden Fingers” trapped in his palm.
For the Demonic Cultivators’ scheme to succeed, they had relied on Rule Fragments.
The Rule Fragment in the Huntian Old Demon’s hand was called “Invisible Man.” At first, it had merely been a Rule Fragment capable of turning people and objects invisible.
In other worlds, it was often used for filthy purposes.
But after it fell into the Huntian Old Demon’s hands, he discovered that although it was a tasteless, mediocre thing, it had unique strengths.
When Rule Fragments operated, there were no fluctuations of spiritual power at all, and they could not be broken.
The Huntian Old Demon had tried every method he could think of and still could not force anything hidden by “Invisible Man” to reappear.
His divine sense and other senses told him the thing was right there, yet no matter what he did, he could not see it with his eyes.
The Huntian Old Demon discovered the potential of the Rule Fragment and fed it many concealment spell arts.
“Invisible Man” had never before received such treatment in a complete great world like heaven and earth.
It grew rapidly and had already become capable of erasing one’s presence from the five senses, even deceiving divine sense to a certain extent.
The lack of fluctuations from the Demonic Cultivators, and even from the activation of the Huntian Cup, had all been its ability.
The Huntian Old Demon’s feeding and exploitation had clearly caused this Rule Fragment to swell quickly.
Ever since it fell into Shuang Wenlü’s hands, “Invisible Man” had been chattering nonstop.
“You saw my ability, did you not? This is far beyond your annoying, restricted spell arts. As long as you cooperate with me, I can lend you these abilities! If you can collect more cultivation manuals and such for me, these abilities can become even stronger!”
Shuang Wenlü had already checked its rules. He let out a soft laugh.
“People always connect things that have nothing to do with each other. So Rule Fragments can also fall into such delusions?”
“Invisible Man” did not understand.
“What do you mean?”
Shuang Wenlü said, “What made you think that just because you have these abilities, I would not destroy you?”
“Invisible Man” panicked.
“Wait! You want to—”
Shuang Wenlü ground his fingertip slightly. In an instant, “Invisible Man’s” rules were crushed into powder.
When the other Rule Fragment felt Shuang Wenlü’s gaze turn toward it, it looked as if it was about to cry.
“Boss! I was forced! I am innocent! I am just an honest farming system. It was that person who forced me!”
It truly had been kidnapped.
Unlike “Invisible Man,” the farming system was not so ignorant.
“Invisible Man” had only been fed into growth after arriving in heaven and earth.
The farming system had already traveled through many worlds, including more than a few vast great worlds.
Before it entered the world of heaven and earth, the farming system already knew that this was a world with a Guardian of the Dao.
After it arrived, it obediently found a peasant with a few mu of farmland.
It planned to assist him in developing all kinds of plants in heaven and earth, and through that process comprehend the Dao of this world.
It never expected that Madam Seedborn would pass by and casually “seedborn” the peasant as well.
The poor peasant reincarnated on the spot, leaving the farming system behind to be seized by Madam Seedborn.
Rule Fragments like them were all extremely specialized.
They were absurdly strong within their own rules, but full of gaps everywhere else.
Madam Seedborn was not weak among Demonic Cultivators, and the farming system had the worst luck.
She happened to discover its weakness, leaving it with no choice but to submit to her control.
The earth’s qi trouble across eighteen county towns had not been caused by a formation at all.
It had been Madam Seedborn’s work, carried out through the farming system.
The poor farming system knew that this world had a Guardian of the Dao.
If it went too far, it would surely be finished.
Every day it had committed evil deeds while trembling in fear.
“I truly had no power to resist, Boss!” the farming system sobbed.
“I know.” Shuang Wenlü’s ears ached from its wailing. “Show me your records.”
The farming system immediately displayed them.
“Of course, Boss! From today onward, you are my lifesaving benefactor! Tell me to go east and I will not go west! Tell me to chase dogs and I will not fight roosters!”
What Shuang Wenlü wanted to see were messages related to the Blood-Rust Blade.
The turmoil stirred by the Blood-Rust Blade was too large and too fast.
That was not normal.
Cultivators in the world often stirred up storms in order to compete for a treasure.
But as the core of such storms, those treasures—aside from naturally formed spiritual objects—always needed some kind of background and origin.
For example, this Blood-Rust Blade.
Whose hands had it once been in?
What power did it possess?
What feats had it accomplished?
Without any proof like that, who would know what ability this blade had? If someone merely claimed it contained an unsurpassed Dao Canon, why would anyone believe it? How could it attract so many cultivators to fight over it?
Yet this Blood-Rust Blade happened to have no background or origin at all.
Shuang Wenlü had asked Luo Pinglan as well.
Luo Pinglan had never heard of any Blood-Rust Blade either. She had gone to ask some juniors who had been to Suizhou before the Sword Sovereign emerged from seclusion, and from them she obtained an answer like this:
“The origin of the Blood-Rust Blade? I do not know either. Everyone says there is an unsurpassed Dao Canon hidden inside it, so I wanted to join the excitement and take a look.”
How could Sword Pavilion disciples be this simple-minded?!
The news of the Blood-Rust Blade had first stirred up turmoil among Demonic Cultivators.
The earliest source of the news had come from the Black Market, a place of mixed fish and dragons, where many Demonic Cultivators hid their identities.
The farming system had already been kidnapped by Madam Seedborn before she arrived in Suizhou.
It knew exactly how Madam Seedborn had obtained the news about the Blood-Rust Blade.
In its records, there was even a blurry image.
It was a straight saber, yet it looked neither sharp nor sturdy.
Every inch of its blade was wrapped in dark red blood-rust.
It looked as if it would crumble into slag with the lightest touch.
When Shuang Wenlü saw this image, he paused, then smiled.
“So it was this.”
The farming system could not suppress its curiosity and asked carefully, “You recognize this blade?”
Shuang Wenlü said, “It is not a blade. It is a sword.”