Chapter 86

Beneath their feet, a massive array spread out like a slowly-igniting fire beacon. A sigh, coming from who-knew-where, was in their ears.

Cheng Qian was stunned. “This looks like the one Han Yuan drew outside of Fuyao Mountain that one day.”

“Shh…” Yan Zhengming raised a hand and covered Cheng Qian’s eyes. “Listen carefully.”

The demonic cultivator that had arranged the array once said that this one’s name was the ‘Mountain-Hearing Array’. What could be heard, then?

The depths of the darkness first emitted the fragmented cries of insects, followed by the understated sound of water, wind blowing past the grasslands, someone seemingly turning over nearby…

“This seems to be the back of the mountain,” Yan Zhengming whispered.

On the grass beside a secluded pool near a mountain cave, a few youths had carried a little thing that was maybe human, maybe yao. Suffering dually from cold and hunger in wait for their Master, they had dozed off unwittingly, and once they had opened their eyes, half-awake in their daze, this had been the exact noise that had poured into their ears.

In turn, the wind passed through a bamboo forest, the fragrance of its leaves seemingly about to come at one’s call. The thin bamboo shaft of a brush rapped a stone table, producing a crisp and slightly revolving sound. The instant next, there was a flapping noise, as if a paper was getting lifted up by the breeze, yet not wafted far away. Something was apparently holding it down by a corner, making it so that it only made noise non-stop.

This was the Residence of Peace.

Neither of them made a peep, quietly listening for a long time. They seemed to go in a circle around Fuyao Mountain, all the way until the the array under them dimmed, its final trace of light vanishing into the blackness.

So, Han Yuan had secretly come to the foot of the Mountain that day, and aggressively laid down a dangerous-looking array… just to hear the sounds of Fuyao?

Cheng Qian wasn’t sure what emotions were in his heart for a moment.

Then, the hand covering the sights before him was put down. Yan Zhengming grasped the shining sealstone in his palm, and their surroundings promptly went black. Inside the dark, a white figure was seen to abruptly walk out, a wooden sword held in his hand. Not far from them, he haughtily performed an ancient rite, lifting his hand to draw out a Fuyao Wooden Sword-initiating gesture.

What was the meaning of this?

The man demonstrated the beginning of the Wooden Sword where he stood, disregarding anyone else.

At the start, he was a teen in an outfit of plain white clothing. As the Wooden Sword advanced layer by layer, move by move, his countenance gradually morphed into that of an adult’s, the wooden sword he held transformed into a prismatic blade dripping with cold light, and the clothing on him turned into graceful brocade robes.

Every form of his every motion was similar to what their Master had taught, but there were some unclear areas of subtle difference.

By the time one endless set of Wooden Sword techniques was over, the sword-dancer had since become an old man, his brocade robes had become plain white clothing once again, and his precious sword had turned into an edgeless wooden one once again. He hung his sword with pensive eyes, the type of tranquility about him being from one that could see through the red dust of the world.

His set of swordplay had been as snugly satisfying as the flow of water. Both of them were practitioners of the sword, with Yan Zhengming being a sword cultivator in particular, so they could naturally make out the depths therein. Respectively shocked for a moment, neither had the mind to say anything.

The next instant, the elder in white suddenly lifted his head, then stabbed his sword at them.

Cheng Qian shoved Yan Zhengming away, and they came three chi apart. The wooden sword pierced through the air in the middle, frigid sword wind paring off a strand of disheveled hair that was hanging at Cheng Qian’s shoulder.

After that, in the blink of an eye, it vanished, and two elders in white instead appeared on-scene. They floated in, feet not touching the ground, and immediately separated the other two.

When Yan Zhengming misstepped in his dodge, his entire person sunk into darkness, and promptly disappeared.

Cheng Qian suffered a fright. “Senior brother!”

His true essence was being firmly repressed into his inner sanctum, making him temporarily no different than a mortal. Shuang Ren, which had frequently been able to link up with his state of mind before this, suddenly became incomparably stagnant. He used all of his effort to draw it out and block, but the elder’s wooden sword seemed to be pressing down with all the strength of Mount Tai, numbing his wrist. Adding that onto the exceeding strangeness of this situation, Cheng Qian instinctively retreated.

That retreat didn’t matter, though, as Shuang Ren immediately showed signs of backlashing. The fierce, ungrateful sword hadn’t acted up in many years, so he had nearly forgotten what a piece of shit it was.

The old man’s second move was already on its way over. Cheng Qian had to grit his teeth and intercept the maneuver again, not allowed to take half a step away.

The pressure on his hands was getting greater and greater, like the sky had collapsed and was pressing down upon his shoulders.

His human strength was ultimately not holding up well, and, combined with this unforgiving sword plus disallowance to retreat, his arms ended up shaking, wrists making soft cracking sounds from where they were stuck, as if his tendons were spraining. He forcefully started battering with his true essence that had been sealed inside his qi sea, and it incessantly charged against his inner sanctum; frost flashed past his eyes again and again, yet was further rigidly stifled back down again and again, too.

He was anxious to find Yan Zhengming, and didn’t want to wrangle with this old man mortal-style one bit. He suffered a bout of befuddlement at once, flying a kick at his counterpart’s abdomen.

Unexpectedly, his foot kicked emptiness. The elder himself was just an apparition, the sword he held alone being real.

Upon stepping on air, the strength in his arms was lost, and the old one’s wooden sword viciously pounded into his chest, for true this time. Had his physical form not fully tempered the Spirit-Collecting Jade, this strike could have broken a row of his ribs.

He choked and coughed a few times, feeling half of his body go numb from the hit. All of the wounds on his back that had stopped bleeding now split open.

The elder looked at him mutely, dead indifference suffusing his turbid eyes. Holding his wooden sword up level, he pointed it at his chest, and for a moment, the only surrounding sound was Cheng Qian’s slightly rough panting.

All of a sudden, the old man opened his mouth. “You want to walk the ‘path of humanity’, with that reckless mentality of yours?”

Cheng Qian had been of the mind to beat this guy into a flour sack, but when he heard that, his actions stopped. “Senior, you’re…”

“Take the blows, talk less drivel!” The man swept his sword all the way back horizontally, then put the ‘Peak’ in ‘Decline from the Peak’, his wooden sword slashing out a long arc akin to a full moon.

Were this to land, his True Jade would likely be shattered.

Cheng Qian dared not take this lightly, nor did he dare to stubbornly contend with him, slightly pressed as he stepped once forwards to avoid that edge. Recalling with difficulty the spell of breakaway moves he had studied when his cultivation base had been humble, he hurriedly fell back onto the ‘Subtlety’ maneuver of identical style.

‘Subtlety’ concentrated on the concept of ‘wind picking up from the tips of duckweeds’; that meant that when something was at its peak, there would actually have long been roots of disaster buried within it, where those roots and that brightly-blooming situation strengthened up together, ultimately becoming a turning point of going from prosperity to decline. The move was variable and extraordinarily low-key, inharmonious with Cheng Qian’s habitual category of Tide Swordplay, as well as the overbearing qi mixed in with it — he quickly strained himself enacting it, causing his movements to automatically slow a bit.

That slowness could be described as a hairsbreadth of mistake cheating him out of a thousand li of distance. The webs of his hands numbed, and Shuang Ren clanged as it was sent flying by the wooden sword!

“…”

He had studied the blade since of the age of ten until now, Shuang Ren having swept across the world. It had never before been humiliated in this way.

The man in white stared at him expressionlessly. Doing some motion with his hand, Shuang Ren, laying on the ground, soared up to come before Cheng Qian. “Get up.”

Cheng Qian’s fingers tightened.

“Idiot,” the elder spoke once more.

About to crush his own fingers into pieces, Cheng Qian grabbed Shuang Ren, and then the elder leapt straight up. In an instant, millions of sword copies whistled past his face, dense as rain at spring’s onset; there was no possibility of escape, nor of defense.

This was actual Subtlety!

Cheng Qian’s pupils constricted, suddenly becoming aware that the other was apparently teaching him. He looked on, dumbstruck, for a moment, until that wooden sword ripped through those inexhaustible mirages to stop perfectly straight under the tip of his nose.

“Have you never properly learned the sword before?” the old man asked. “Who is your Master?”

Cheng Qian paused, beyond his control.

Muchun Zhenren had indeed instructed him for no more than over a year, then quickly transferred the entire Fuyao Wooden Sword skillset to him at the Valley of No Sorrow, counting on little else other than his cleverness and highly-retentive memory as a child. Afterwards, the sect’s list of moves had basically been written out from his memory, with their most senior brother amending areas of discrepancy.

Now that he thought about it, he had noted those in his head in a rush, while also knowing little about them. Had they necessarily been correct?

Had the sloppy, off-kilter swordplay said senior brother had learned as a child actually managed to amend anything?

“Our Master died when we had barely entered the sect,” Cheng Qian quietly explained.

The other furrowed his brows.

“Before he reached his end, he used his primordial spirit to demonstrate Fuyao Wooden Sword to me,” he respectfully said, suppressing his temper. “I was in a rush, and there’s probably some areas I didn’t recall clearly—“

His words were interrupted by a cold huff. The old man got even more obviously angry upon hearing this, for some reason. He waved his wooden sword around, swatting it on Cheng Qian’s shoulder over and over again, berating him on repeat. “Idiot! Idiot!”

Cheng Qian had never before been affixed with so many labels of ‘idiot’ in his life. He really had no way to argue, however — who could fit them better than he?

Faced with a senior of his own sect, even if the other said that he had a seven-orificed chamberpot for a head, he was obliged to listen.

The elder kept hopping about on his feet for a minute, and then his form suddenly changed; with one turn around, he transformed into the image of that middle-aged man in brocade robes, another Peak move rippling outward.

Cheng Qian’s scalp prickled. When this senior had put on the appearance of an old man, his utilization of Decline from the Peak’s swordstyle had been ruthless, yet more inclined towards the ‘Decline’ part, and had rather lacked momentum. In his appearance of a middle-aged man, though, that wooden sword had changed into an unnamed, high-quality sword, which precisely matched up with Peak’s swordwill, its might unable to be spoken of in the same breath.

Innumerable thoughts revolved around Cheng Qian’s mind in the span of a second. After mulling over Subtlety, which the elder had just glossed over, from start to finish once through, he toughened up his hide to execute the move once again.

And he got it!

Yet, before he had time to rejoice, the man had hoisted his sword up with no further word, then flipped his entire body up into the air. From his high vantage point, he hacked downwards — this was the changed form of Peak!

Cheng Qian’s pupils quickly shrank. The next instant, he discovered that the restriction on his true essence had been cleared, which frantically circulated inside his qi sea from being confined for so long. Shuang Ren softly buzzed in his hand, and then immediately separated into eight sword copies for a fight at close quarters…

He didn’t wait for his opponent to switch maneuvers, and went ahead to the first step of entering Subtlety’s freezing, frost-like swordwill, which flooded into every crevice of the entire space, leaving no indictators, yet being omnipresent. The man’s third Peak wave swiftly came, and their two currents of true essence collided in mid-air, creating an immense, earth-shaking sound.

His senior didn’t stay his hand, continuously chopping down with sixteen moves of Peak, which got trickier and more dangerous with each consecutive strike.

For the first time, Cheng Qian had truly grasped Subtlety’s swordwill. That initially somewhat sluggish and rough swordplay became increasingly proficient, and Shuang Ren raised aloft its sky-filling sword copies, spreading out over all the air in a way that caused one to shudder. For a moment, it was equivalent in efficacy to the Demon Extermination Array.

What a shame that the stronger he got, the stronger his counterpart got, too, eventually draining his energy.

At the sixteenth move’s arrival, Shuang Ren came out his hand once again, tumbling in a sorry state on the ground. Cheng Qian forced in a breath, swayed unsteadily for a minute, and then fell right into a half-kneel, barely managing to support himself off the ground on his arms.

The man looked down upon him as he held his sword against his neck. “Do you know where you made a mistake?” he asked coldly.

Heartbeat like thunder for a time, Cheng Qian did not respond.

“‘Subtlety’ is the most difficult move of Fuyao Wooden Sword, unpredictable and all-encompassing. Yours was a load of crap before, but in wink, you’ve already gotten skilled at it. With that aptitude, why do you prefer to delve into the swordplay of another school? Reckless!”

Were he to have said that his mindset had just been a bit reckless from concern over Yan Zhengming, Cheng Qian would have admitted to it. But, the strenuous effort he had put in for so many years had never been a single bit inferior to anyone else’s, and with his new lease on life, he had never been more carefree than anyone else… his natural talent set aside for the time being, he did not regard himself as a reckless person at all.

Thus, he defended himself. “I—“

The corners of the man’s mouth lifted up, exposing a stiff smile as he cut him off. “It’s because you think that Fuyao Wooden Sword isn’t the right path for you, yes? It goes down the ‘path of humanity’. From life unto death, from youth unto age, there are millions and millions of average people in this world who cannot break away from this trajectory. There’s nothing a bit strange about that. You believe yourself to be an exception that’s different from those average people, right?”

“…”

Thinking back on it, when others had been newborn calves unafraid of tigers, still having brilliant and infinite prospects for the future, he had considered himself to have already matured early, and lost his youthful heart. When others had been searching all about, at a loss as to what the path ahead was, he had considered himself to have already been after a clear aim, walking far ahead of them. When others had undergone all sorts of struggles and had things go contrary to their will, he had run amok in the world, long being afraid of nothing. When others had longed for Heavenwards ascent, searching in every way possible yet never receiving what they had wanted, he had willingly walked upon the ‘path of humanity’.

He had never bragged about himself, but his self-importance, hidden deep inside his subconsciousness, had caused him to never associate any move of Fuyao Wooden Sword with himself.

The varying swordwills inside the Wooden Sword, in his view, had always been partitioned from him by a layer of something, as if he barely had a surface-level understanding of the lives and luck of others, having never genuinely felt as much before.

“You looked at the Heavens and Earth, then at yourself and at others, yet refused to compare yourself to them. Are you not human? Since you have selected the ‘path of humanity’, why are you unwilling to let go of that impressive, yet impractical mindset towards the Heavens and Earth?

“How one treats people wholly depends on their closeness and distance. Who they are moved by, who they put up with, who they are close to, who they love… have you ever revered anyone? Looked up to anyone? Taken anyone as an example?”

Speaking up to there, he abruptly pressed the tip of his sword down, its sharp edge painfully cutting Cheng Qian’s neck open. “Teenagers don’t know how big the world is: arrogant, wild, reckless, self-important. I can see that you’re not a teenager, yet your personality hasn’t made much progress from one.”

A coat of cold sweat formed on Cheng Qian’s back.

“If you truly were outstanding and thoroughly comprehended Fuyao Wooden Sword on your own initiative, why can’t you perform even a move such as Subtlety? Stand up!” the man yelled angrily. “Practice isn’t yet concluded! What are you playing dead for?!”

At the very start, his thoughts were difficult to settle, one day elongating into one year. He was not worried about Yan Zhengming being with him here, instead starting to worry about Li Yun and the rest, who were occupying the same area outside as many demonic cultivators and Divination Bureau people were. In a flash, the owner of this space could make out his wandering thoughts in detail, then abused him with strong winds and vicious rains, forcing him to get rid of his distractions and sink into Fuyao Wooden Sword.

He was confined there for an unknown amount of time, the unnamed owner of the place restricting his true essence uncountable times, forcing him to resemble a young disciple that hadn’t yet entered the sect, and making him practice with Shuang Ren as if it was an ordinary wooden sword.

Yet, once the man, transformed into an elderly look again, had pushed open another door to let him go, Cheng Qian suddenly had a strange feeling, like these sunless, moonless happenings had only occurred in the interval of a thought and a breath. As he stood at the other doorway, he looked up to see that a tiny strand of hair, the one that had been cut off of him by the wooden sword before he had entered, was only just now falling to the ground.

He suddenly took a step back, turning his head. “What do you go by, senior?”

“I have no name,” the man answered, head lowered. “I am just a spot of inheritance, stored away for you all.”

“What would have happened, if we had selected ‘Heaven’ or ‘Earth’?”

“The Fuyao Sect has only ever walked the path of humanity since olden times. I can’t teach the paths of the Heaven and Earth. No one can. You would have just been sent back and forth between places.”

Hearing this, an idea suddenly streaked past Cheng Qian’s mind, too fast for him to catch. He was thoughtful for a short moment, then performed the proper bow of a junior towards the old man, leaving in large strides thereafter.

Behind him, the door to their inheritance silently shut, as if it had never existed in the first place. He raised his head to see Yan Zhengming standing somewhere not too far away whilst hugging the wooden sword he had extracted from his inner sanctum, his head slightly lowered in contemplation.

As soon as he caught sight of him, Cheng Qian immediately felt pleased, and even his steps were quite brisk. “Senior brother…”

However, right when he spoke, Yan Zhengming’s cold gaze swept over to him, slicing off the latter half of his words.

Cheng Qian had grown up with him since childhood, and could tell the difference between when the other was bored and picking a fight, or moved to real anger. Stunned on the spot, he thought to himself, slightly uneasy, Did he get harshly tormented by that old man, too?

After glaring at him, Yan Zhengming turned and walked forward on his own, not making a peep.

With a head full of fog, Cheng Qian followed after him, simultaneously racking his brains to remember when he had ever offended this Young Lord. “What’s going on with you this time?” he asked, exasperated.

The second he said that, he suddenly realized something, himself. His gaze uncontrollably landed upon the wooden sword Yan Zhengming held, scalp going numb. Wait… what did he take the wooden sword out for?

The elder inside their inheritance had been sharp-eyed, but he wouldn’t have noticed that he had said something a little too much, right?

Bringing that to mind, Cheng Qian almost started feeling guilty. Soundlessly wiping off a handful of cold sweat, his mind began to come up with a countermeasure.

Following a long period of waiting, Cheng Qian coughed dryly. Precisely when he went to speak, Yan Zhengming was actually the one to do so first. “What? Have you already composed a lie regarding how to explain this wooden sword?”

“…”

They seemed to have penetrated through a long and narrow passageway, soon arriving at its end, which had a soft halo from the not-yet-bright glimmer of daybreak. Having asked that question, Yan Zhengming directly walked into it without looking back, his figure passing through and vanishing in a flash.

Cheng Qian was quick to chase after him. A pattern burst before his eyes, and then he discovered that he had since returned to the foot of Tai Yin Mountain. Looking back once more, both the Valley of the Heart Demon and any sort of ‘inheritance’ had completely disappeared.

In addition to his fuming senior brother, there were many present. One side was led by Han Yuan, and the entirety of the mob behind him was made of demonic cultivators. The other side was led by You Liang, and behind him was a large batch of ordinary cultivators, which had come to assemble here at some unknown point in time.

Li Yun, Shui Keng, Nian Dada, and the others were unabashedly in the center, floating in the sky.

Cheng Qian was positive that back when the Demon Extermination Array had broken, there had not been this many living, breathing cultivators here.

Could it be that the war between immortals and demons, originally planned for Tai Xing Mountain, had been shifted over here?