novelraw Chapter 32 : Chapter 32
Chapter 32 : Chapter 32
Chapter 32
“Life’s roads run north and south, full of forks and turns. Generals, ministers, and immortals alike must still be made from mortal men.”
When news arrived from the Sword Pavilion, Shuang Wenlü was holding a cup of wine in his hand. The wine was cloudy, astringent, and harsh.
He had just slain a Demonic Cultivator that had been wreaking havoc, and had repaired the poorly maintained formation in the area. The local villagers were grateful to him and had prepared a fine table of dishes in thanks.
“Who has come calling?” Shuang Wenlü asked.
The one communicating with him was still Luo Pinglan. “You guessed it? It’s people from Tiangong Tower.”
Tiangong Tower was also a well-known great sect, famous for its mechanical arts and countless crafts, second only to the top-tier sects. They had their own unique expertise in forging Flying Swords, and often exchanged knowledge with the Sword Pavilion. This time, they had sent people over to probe the Sword Pavilion’s attitude toward the upheaval in heaven and earth and toward the Blood-Rust Blade.
Luo Pinglan knew that Shuang Wenlü had plans of his own regarding the Blood-Rust Blade, so she had come to ask.
“With the attraction of the unsurpassed Dao Canon,” Shuang Wenlü said, “the fact that they managed to hold back until now already shows decent patience.”
Although the several top-tier sects did not forbid their disciples from involving themselves in the matter of the Blood-Rust Blade, neither had they specially mobilized sect resources for it. They simply allowed the younger generation to go out and crash about on their own, as though the Blood-Rust Blade that contained the unsurpassed Dao Canon was no different from any other minor matter that could be used to temper disciples.
Because of that attitude, the other deeply established sects had already restrained themselves for a long time. But after holding back for several months, and after the Blood-Rust Blade had made a circuit through the Demon Abyss and returned, they could no longer endure it either.
One of the villagers’ children stood nearby with a yellowish complexion and sparse, soft hair, sucking on his finger as he stared unblinkingly at the cured meat in front of Shuang Wenlü.
When the child’s mother saw Shuang Wenlü look over, she yanked the child backward and began smiling apologetically, clearly about to slap him.
Shuang Wenlü stopped her and beckoned to the child.
The child hesitated, then walked over. Shuang Wenlü pushed the cured meat toward him.
“Tiangong Tower...” Shuang Wenlü continued transmitting to Luo Pinglan, sounding almost as if he were sighing. “The Blood-Rust Blade is useless to them. Tell them that instead of pondering crooked paths, they would do better to think about how Yin Kaitian’s Dao was successfully walked in the first place.”
Yin Kaitian, also known as Granny Tiangong, was the founding patriarch of Tiangong Tower. She had fallen in a calamity three thousand years ago, and no one yet knew where her reincarnation was. But before her death, she had already walked through her own Dao.
Tiangong Tower’s problem did not lie in its inheritance, but in themselves.
Since Tiangong Tower had come to ask, Shuang Wenlü offered them guidance. Whether they would be able to listen, however, was another matter entirely.
The child clutched the cured meat and ate with great enjoyment. Shuang Wenlü drained the cloudy wine in his cup in one gulp, then strode away.
...
Inside Tiangong Tower, after hearing the message that his disciple had brought back from the Sword Pavilion, Tower Master Guan Qiansuo rubbed the ring on his thumb while his brows twisted tightly into a knot.
Sitting opposite him was a cultivator clad in linked armor. He asked Guan Qiansuo, “Well?”
Guan Qiansuo told him truthfully.
The linked-armored cultivator was named Lu Jianxiu. He came from Wujiguan and had been Guan Qiansuo’s close friend for many years. Tiangong Tower’s awkward predicament was no secret among upper-level cultivators, so there was nothing for him to hide.
Tiangong Tower’s inheritance was first-rate, yet it had never produced a cultivator at the Ninth Layer of the Tianshu Realm. Ever since Granny Tiangong, every single cultivator of Tiangong Tower had gotten stuck at the Eighth Layer of the Tianxuan Realm, without exception. And because of that, Tiangong Tower had never managed to advance one step further into the ranks of the top-tier sects.
A top-tier sect did not need to have someone like the Sword Sovereign. So long as it had a cultivator who could reach the Tianshu Realm, that was enough. Yet for three thousand years, Tiangong Tower had been unable to produce even one Tianshu Realm cultivator.
Tiangong Tower’s inheritance was first-rate, but it was not complete.
After hearing him out, Lu Jianxiu asked, “Are you planning to give up?”
Guan Qiansuo sensed something subtle in his expression and asked, “Do you have an idea?”
Lu Jianxiu said, “Do you believe that an unsurpassed Dao Canon pointing directly at the Great Dao would truly be useless?”
Guan Qiansuo’s brow furrowed, but he did not refute him.
Although the message had come from the Sword Pavilion, Guan Qiansuo also knew very well that it was no different from the Sword Sovereign’s own attitude. As the master of Tiangong Tower, he knew certain ancient secrets that could not be spoken of to outsiders.
Tiangong Tower’s founding patriarch, Granny Tiangong, had once shared old ties with the Sword Sovereign and with several other top cultivators of Qiankun. Out of regard for past friendship, they would not allow Granny Tiangong’s inheritance to be severed. Because of that, Guan Qiansuo did place some trust in the Sword Sovereign’s guidance. But...
“But the several great sects really have not made any overt move against the Blood-Rust Blade,” Guan Qiansuo said slowly.
Lu Jianxiu curled his lip in mockery. “If they say they haven’t made a move, does that mean they really haven’t? If you wanted to obtain the unsurpassed Dao Canon, would you send people out in a grand and noisy scramble for it?”
Guan Qiansuo rubbed the ring on his thumb.
That was true. If he wanted to get the Blood-Rust Blade, he would never send out a large number of disciples to fight for it publicly. He would secretly dispatch one or two trusted people instead.
Or he would act personally.
In Suizhou, Shuang Wenlü let out a sigh.
“Qiankun is not the same now as it was in the past,” Ning Xianmian said lazily.
They had too many roads they could choose from now. If one road failed, they simply switched to another. They no longer had the courage to blaze a trail through hardship and thorns. Even if it was a road that had already once been successfully walked, the moment they saw obstacles ahead, they would try charging through, discover that crossing was difficult, and then give up and choose a different path.
Shuang Wenlü let out a faint snort. “I think their courage is abundant enough. Haven’t quite a few of them already come out shouting that heaven is unjust and that they want to defy it?”
Ning Xianmian burst into laughter when he heard that.
After many Rule Fragments descended, no small number of people who had obtained “Golden Fingers” had become feverishly excited, eager to challenge heaven and earth. Yet they did not know that their hearts, given over to indulgence and desire, were the easiest things to exploit. The Rule Fragments toyed with them until they spun in circles and turned them into vanguards opening paths in Qiankun on their behalf.
If cultivation were such an easy thing, then why should one so easily gain immortality and long life, and obtain the power to alter the fates of all living beings with a mere gesture?
How many people looked at the Sword Sovereign’s title and status with jealousy and resentment, thinking that if they had been born with such talent, they too would have succeeded? But how many had walked the roads he once walked, or made the choices he once made?
The Blood-Rust Blade had been born while the world of Qiankun was still growing. At that time, the Dao of Qiankun was not yet complete. The world was attempting to advance, and all living beings had only just begun to grope their way toward cultivation.
Strange events and uncanny tales emerged without end. Together, all living beings and the world itself stumbled forward through a vast fog. Birth and extinction, confusion and suffering—the Blood-Rust Blade was the trace of Qiankun’s attempt to ascend. It was the beginning of the Sword Sovereign’s Dao path. It was a lifetime in which Shuang Wenlü had walked toward entering the Dao from an age when Qiankun still possessed no path of cultivation, from the most chaotic period in Qiankun’s history.
That was far more distant even than three thousand years ago.
...
Lang Qingyun was dreaming. Once again, he dreamed of that young man.
He had already dreamed of this young man many times. Ever since the Blood-Rust Blade had come into his hands, every few days he would have a dream connected to that young man—or rather, to the Blood-Rust Blade of the past.
These dreams were fragmented and disordered, not arranged by time. Most of them showed the young man practicing swordsmanship. Sometimes he used a wooden sword, sometimes an ordinary iron sword, sometimes the Frostflight Sword, and sometimes the Blood-Rust Blade. The sword techniques he used were different as well—sometimes inexperienced, sometimes practiced, sometimes agile, sometimes fierce.
Among them, however, the most special was the swordsmanship of the Blood-Rust Blade.
The Blood-Rust Blade did not merely resemble a straight saber in appearance. Its center of gravity was the same as well.
In an ordinary sword, the thickest part of the blade lay in the center ridge, and the weight to the left and right was balanced, allowing the weapon to be used with fluid versatility.
In a saber, the heaviest and thickest part lay along the back of the blade, making it convenient for chopping.
But the ridge of the Blood-Rust Blade was not in the center. It was offset toward the straight edge, which caused its center of gravity to tilt to one side as well, as though the back of a straight saber had also been sharpened into an edge. Because of this, the sword would produce slight deviations when used with ordinary sword techniques, yet it was very well suited to chopping methods used with sabers.
To wield this incomparably sharp treasured sword, one first had to adapt to it.
This time, at last, the dream changed. The young man had finally learned everything hidden within the Blood-Rust Blade, had adapted to the sword, and had decided to descend the mountain.
He walked along the road, his appearance somewhat bedraggled after living in the mountains for so long, but his eyes were bright, and he looked very cheerful.
He had already planned it all out. Once he reached the inn in the city, he would wash himself up properly, change into a fresh set of clothes, tidy his appearance, and then go find his friends and share with them the new sword techniques he had learned.
But his journey did not go smoothly. Before he could reach the city, someone stopped him.
It was a gang of bandits. Judging from the way they were dressed, they did not seem to be doing very well. The weapons in their hands were all shabby things like clubs and shoulder poles, yet they carried out robbery with practiced skill. In the blink of an eye they had surrounded him, shouting, “Robbery! Keep your wealth and lose your life, keep your life and lose your wealth!”
The young man looked at them and saw at once that these people had never killed before. They looked vicious enough, but there was no bloody aura of murder on them.
He smiled and asked, “Looking at me like this, do I seem like someone with wealth?”
The bandit leader sized him up from top to bottom and said, “Hand over your sword.”
“That won’t do,” the young man replied with a smile. “I still have use for this sword.”
The bandits immediately turned hostile. Several who knew some martial arts came at him directly, while the others shouted and cheered them on.
The young man knocked them down with ease, but the group seemed to realize that he did not want to kill anyone. One clung shamelessly to his waist, another grabbed at his legs, and one more seized the chance to launch a sneak attack from behind, swinging a club at his head.
Even though the young man had originally been in a good mood, they managed to irritate him at last. He swept away the people below him with a kick, drew the Blood-Rust Blade, and slashed backward in a saber-like horizontal cut...
When the sword edge was less than an inch from the sneak attacker’s neck, the young man suddenly came to his senses and abruptly halted the Blood-Rust Blade.
He had never intended to kill.
But though he had stopped, the man attacking him from behind could not stop his own momentum. Seeing that his neck was about to throw itself onto the blade, the young man no longer had time to withdraw the move. By instinct, he twisted his wrist and turned the back of the Blood-Rust Blade toward the attacker’s neck.
Blood sprayed three feet high.
The young man froze where he stood.
“He killed someone!” The bandits shouted in terror and scattered in all directions.
The young man looked at the corpse lying on the ground.
He had reversed the Blood-Rust Blade, but the back side had an edge too. The man had still died.
He truly had not meant to kill.
For someone who practiced martial arts, such a situation was perfectly normal. It was nothing more than failing to pull back in time.
But the young man did not seem to think so.
His brows had already knotted together. He stared at the dead man on the ground for a long while, then looked at his own hand and at the Blood-Rust Blade in it.
...
Cai Suhong sat at the mouth of a mountain cave. Starlight shone in from outside, dim to the point of almost seeming absent.
No one knew where news of the Blood-Rust Blade had leaked from, but she and Lang Qingyun once again had no choice but to face pursuit. And this time, it was even more terrifying than before.
Lang Qingyun was still asleep. Recently, he had often fallen into dreams. According to him, those dreams were all related to the young man they had seen in the Mystic Realm, and to the Blood-Rust Blade of the past.
Cai Suhong had tried several times as well, but she had never had such dreams. She had thought about it too. Perhaps dreaming was Lang Qingyun’s unique way, while her own way might lie within the Mystic Realm itself.
But they were being pursued constantly now, and Cai Suhong simply had no energy to dig into some long-buried past within that fabricated Mystic Realm the way she had before. She needed—
“Get up!” The Mystic Realm System suddenly shrieked urgently within her soul. “Run! Something’s coming!”
Cai Suhong jolted and immediately shoved Lang Qingyun awake. “Wake up!”
The Mystic Realm System had already displayed the surrounding map. At the edge of its perception, an ominous blackness was encroaching inward. They had already been surrounded.
“What the hell is that?!” Cai Suhong demanded.
Those things were moving fast. By the time Lang Qingyun woke up, the black shapes had already entered the range of Cai Suhong’s divine sense as well. They were—
a dense swarm of four-winged flying insects!
They did not advance by flying in any ordinary way. Instead, they flickered forward in jumps. With one beat of their four thin wings, they would vanish from where they were and reappear some distance ahead. It was only because there were so many insects in the swarm, and because the gaps between one flicker and the next were filled with other insects, that their strange mode of movement was hard to notice without close inspection.
“Feizhi!” Cai Suhong’s expression turned ugly.
Feizhi were naturally born strange species. Their inborn divine ability was the power to flicker along the veins of space. Beyond that, they had no other special ability and were usually almost harmless.
But that was only on the premise that they were ordinary Feizhi.
Feizhi did not live in groups, because they all possessed the ability to flicker along spatial veins. If they interfered with one another while using that divine ability, it could very easily lead to the disastrous result of both sides being torn apart by space.
Which meant that these Feizhi now closing in around them must have a controller behind them!
“The Sting King...” Cai Suhong said gravely. “We have to find a way to escape!”
The Sting King was a famous Demonic Cultivator. His true form was an insect yao, and he was exceptionally skilled at controlling all kinds of insects. Rumor had it he also had some connection to the Gu God Sect. He was nothing like the Six Bandits of Bima Mountain, and far surpassed any cultivator who had come to seize the Blood-Rust Blade before. The Sting King was the lord of Gu King City among the Hundred Cities of Moye. Among the lords of the Hundred Cities of Moye, not one had a cultivation below the Seventh Layer of the Tianji Realm!
These Feizhi were closing in with terrifying order. Because of their influence, the surrounding space had already become impossible to teleport through. Whether it was a teleportation formation or a shifting talisman, none of them could be used anymore.
Lang Qingyun was fully awake now. He did not ask who the Sting King was. When he saw the situation before him, he said directly, “What are you thinking of doing?”
“We can only kill our way out,” Cai Suhong said.
The Feizhi had already sealed off the surrounding space. Unlike formations and restrictions, Feizhi were living things. There was no such thing as a formation core.
Under the Sting King’s control, unless they killed enough of the Feizhi swarm that their numbers were no longer sufficient to maintain the blockade, there was no way at all to break open the spatial lockdown. But that was almost an impossible task.
Killing the Sting King would work too. But setting aside the fact that he had not shown himself at all, even if he did appear, Cai Suhong had no confidence that she and Lang Qingyun together could kill him. At that point, it would still be uncertain who would die.
They could only carve open a path and escape alive in the instant before the Feizhi swarm managed to form the blockade again.
“We only have one chance.” Cai Suhong swallowed hard.
She understood very clearly that the reason the Sting King had not shown himself directly, killed the two insignificant pawns before him, and taken the Blood-Rust Blade was because he had been intimidated by the Blood-Rust Blade’s reputation.
First, the Sting King did not know what the two of them had gained from the Blood-Rust Blade during this time. Second, he believed that since they had managed to seize the Blood-Rust Blade amid so many contenders, they must possess extraordinary methods. What he did not know was that they had gotten the Blood-Rust Blade only because of that inexplicable blood light that had tried to possess them.
If they fought the Sting King directly, he would immediately see through the depth of the two of them. When that happened, he would no longer be so cautious as he was now.
“I understand.” Lang Qingyun closed his eyes and slowly drew the Blood-Rust Blade. “I need a little time.”
When he opened them again, his gaze had already turned chilling and terrifying, with dark-red bloodshot threads slowly rising into his eyes.
He needed time to adjust his state and to let loose the power of the Dao Seed and the Blood-Rust Blade.
Cai Suhong took a deep breath and said within her divine sense to the Mystic Realm System, “Come on.”
She needed to block the Feizhi, but she could not expose her true strength. In that case, the only option was to construct a Mystic Realm on the spot.
“From now on, we should really rename ourselves the Refuge Construction System,” the Mystic Realm System grumbled, while skillfully helping Cai Suhong build the framework.
The Feizhi swarm had already reached the cave entrance. Even with the naked eye, their flickering four wings were now visible.
Cai Suhong formed a hand seal, and her treasured cauldron abruptly grew larger, covering both herself and Lang Qingyun upside down beneath it. Mysterious golden runes of the Mystic Realm rapidly crawled across the inner walls of the cauldron, growing at the same time toward the upper and lower ends, about to seal closed into a sphere.
At the same moment, the black Feizhi swarm had already come within three inches of them.
“Open!” Cai Suhong shouted.
Golden light flashed together and contracted inward.
The Feizhi flickered, instantly crossing those three inches of distance.
At the same moment, the treasured cauldron and the golden runes vanished together.
The densely packed Feizhi had already invaded every inch of the cave’s interior, but the two people inside had disappeared without a trace.
The Feizhi swarm crawled and flickered through the cave, inspecting every suspicious inch of space. A moment later, a human-shaped gap suddenly opened within that scalp-numbing mass of insects. A figure wearing a black faceplate appeared.
The Sting King extended an arm wrapped in black armor, and wherever he passed, the insect swarm parted like flowing water.
Those two cultivators had vanished without a trace right under his nose. He had already ordered the Feizhi to inspect the place over and over, and there were no mechanisms or traps in the cave. So he had come in person to see how the two of them had escaped from the Feizhi’s spatial interference.
His fingers slowly passed over the place where the two had vanished, catching a faint and hidden fluctuation. “A Mystic Realm?”
Beneath the black faceplate, the Sting King smiled.
He was not a fool either, and he quickly understood what had happened.
The way these two had created a Mystic Realm astonished him, but at the same time it revealed their weakness.
If they had been strong enough, then when facing incoming enemies, they should only have had two possible reactions: either they did not want to be dragged into battle and therefore used some means to escape from the Feizhi swarm, or they faced his encirclement head-on and either killed him or drove him back.
But... hiding inside a turtle shell could only mean that they neither had the means to break free from the Feizhi swarm nor the ability to fight him. So they had no choice but to hide inside, hoping that he would fail to discover their hiding place or be unable to break open their shell.
To be fair, using a spatial Mystic Realm as a hiding method did delight the Sting King.
There were many Mystic Realms in Qiankun. Some were formed naturally through a chance convergence of circumstances, while others were spaces once opened by powerful predecessors and later abandoned. Anyone capable of opening a Mystic Realm possessed unfathomable cultivation. Yet these two cultivators, who did not even dare face him directly, actually possessed a secret art for opening a Mystic Realm. Whether or not that secret art had come from the Blood-Rust Blade, it was enough to thrill him.
Still, whether he wanted the Blood-Rust Blade or the method for opening a Mystic Realm, he would first have to pry these two turtles out of their shell.
For other cultivators, forcibly entering a sealed Mystic Realm might be troublesome. But for the Sting King, it would only take some effort.
A Mystic Realm was like a small fruit attached to Qiankun. Only with a stem connecting it to Qiankun could it avoid drifting away and falling loose. Therefore, no matter how sealed a Mystic Realm was, it would always have an access point.
And the Feizhi swarm he had refined was extraordinarily sensitive to the veins of space.
“Go find the place where the spatial veins are abnormal,” he ordered the Feizhi swarm.
The scalp-crawling black insect swarm began to writhe, and very quickly it gathered around a tiny node.
“Ah... found it,” the Sting King said with a smile.
He reached out and rubbed at that node. The glossy black arm-armor transformed into countless bizarre black insects with pincer-like jaws. They looked like the heads of ants, yet only the front halves, as though they were insect-head masks with pincers for mouths, and the edges of the masks were their limbs.
These strange black insects fastened themselves over the heads of the Feizhi one by one. Their legs gripped the Feizhi’s heads tightly, like masks firmly strapped over their faces. Then, in a bizarre turn, the Feizhi’s inborn divine power flowed through these “masks,” and the pincers began to open and close.
Once these two kinds of insects combined, the Feizhi’s divine ability underwent a terrifying evolution. In the past, they could only travel a short distance along the veins of space. But now, using those ant-like pincer jaws, they could cut the veins of space.
“Go on,” said the Sting King.
The Feizhi swarm wearing insect armor began gnawing at the “fruit stem” of the Mystic Realm.
Inside the Mystic Realm, fine beads of sweat seeped across Cai Suhong’s face, quickly gathering into drops and streaming down.
Constructing a Mystic Realm was not a simple thing. Even with the Mystic Realm System’s assistance and sufficient resources, it still required Cai Suhong herself to fill it out. The Mystic Realm System built the framework for her, but Cai Suhong was the one who could place that framework into Qiankun. She was one of the living beings within Qiankun, the contractor of the Mystic Realm System, and the link between the two.
She had sealed the Mystic Realm. Since Feizhi could inspect the veins of space, she had guessed that the Sting King would be able to sense the existence of the Mystic Realm. But she had not expected him to come at it so quickly or so violently.
Those Feizhi wearing faceplates gnawed at the seal with ruthless speed. Cai Suhong’s spiritual power poured out like a flood through opened floodgates, yet she had no way to slow them by much.
Cai Suhong looked over at Lang Qingyun beside her. His eyes were half open and half closed, and the killing intent around him was growing stronger and stronger, but it had still not stabilized.
The seal at the Mystic Realm’s entrance was growing thinner and weaker. Soon, it would no longer be able to hold.
Cai Suhong wiped the sweat from her face, gripped her large cauldron and bronze ladle, and stood in front of the entrance.
She had to hold on a little longer.