Volume 2, Chapter 49 – Doubling

“Jade Spirit, Luminous Heart” truly lived up to being the fundamental method of Yuming Sword Dao. Just explaining the entry method and practice details to Bai Xiang took Xiang Xian the entire morning plus a good chunk of the afternoon.

Its cultivation requirements were extremely harsh. Not only did the disciple need to possess extraordinary intellect and willpower, they also had to have a specific cultivation talent.

What did that mean?

Suppose someone was incredibly powerful at cultivating other methods, their talent so rare it was almost unheard of in this world. Even then, they might not be able to master “Jade Spirit, Luminous Heart.” There was a very high chance they wouldn’t even get in the door.

The talent it demanded was “talent specifically for cultivating Jade Spirit, Luminous Heart.” Every other kind of talent became invalid in the face of this requirement.

And even if you met those conditions, and even if you knew the entry method and training process of “Jade Spirit, Luminous Heart,” you would still be missing the most crucial final step—having the instructor help you “spark the spirit” in your inner landscape.

“Sparking the spirit” was nothing mystical. It was simply the last step of the entry method.

Like a master withholding a finishing move so the disciple wouldn’t learn the art in full—pulled out here purely to prevent the method from being passed out of the sect.

“I’ve observed your mind and your conduct. They’re unlike ordinary people. You stay calm and unhurried in the face of things, and your sense of self is extremely strong, so I guessed you had a fair chance of resonating with the Jade Spirit.”

In the small courtyard, Xiang Xian lifted her eyes to look at Bai Xiang.

“I’ve already explained the mantra and key points clearly. If there’s anything you don’t understand, you can ask me.”

When Bai Xiang had first agreed to become her disciple, Xiang Xian had been so excited she hadn’t looked like an elder at all. Now she’d settled down, just sitting there with an effortless air of authority.

Bai Xiang did indeed have some things she didn’t understand. She brought them up one by one for Xiang Xian’s guidance—and the more Xiang Xian explained, the more astonished she became.

Hold on, why were her questions this weird?

They hadn’t even started actual practice yet—why were the questions the sort that only “Jade Spirit veterans” would be troubled by?

Xiang Xian had heard these questions many times, but almost always from the personal disciples she’d taken herself—problems they only ran into after immersing themselves in this path for a good while.

Yet Bai Xiang could already ask them now. That was what truly shocked Xiang Xian.

In truth, it wasn’t strange at all, because Bai Xiang had seen through the essence of the Jade Spirit from the very start.

Artificial intelligence, scripts, virtual machines, sub-threads, zombie hosts… it was basically that kind of thing.

So with her directly treating the Jade Spirit as those things and posing questions along that line, of course Xiang Xian was going to be surprised.

On top of that, there were even more outlandish questions, like “Can you use the Jade Spirit to raise smaller Jade Spirits?” “If you can, how many at most?” “Can I control many Jade Spirits at once to compute things?” and so on and so forth.

“Stop!” Xiang Xian really couldn’t take it anymore. She looked at Bai Xiang, exasperated. “If the others in the sect heard you talk like this, they’d probably come petition me en masse, begging me not to pass the method to you.”

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Well, what else did she expect?

Just listen to what this rebellious disciple was saying—she even wanted to link up everyone else’s Jade Spirits.

What did that mean, she wanted to learn from Lü Ran and become a puppet master? One person controlling all her senior brothers’ and sisters’ Jade Spirits to make them do her work?

There wasn’t a single core disciple of Yuming Sword Dao who could accept having such a “terrorist” moving freely among them.

She meant: even if Yuming Sword Dao, thanks to the Jade Spirit, tended to churn out “science freaks” under its banner, this line of thinking was still way too outrageous and way too ahead of its time!

Is this bargain master of mine just a bit too conservative…

Bai Xiang got scolded by Xiang Xian, but inwardly she wasn’t particularly convinced.

She’d just brought the concept of an internet over, that was all. Great Yu was already in modern civilization—she’d thought ideas like this were fine to talk about openly.

“I underestimated you as your teacher,” Xiang Xian said, shaking her head at her.

This was far more than just “a fair chance.”

From the perspective of mindset and way of thinking alone, Bai Xiang and the Jade Spirit were simply made for each other. No one could be more suited.

“Talk is empty without practice,” Xiang Xian went on. “I think you’ve more or less wrapped your head around it. Come on, circulate your cultivation now and give it a try. I’ll stand guard for you.”

Bai Xiang tilted her head back. “Then the ‘spirit-sparking’…”

“You don’t like other people entering your inner landscape?” Xiang Xian saw right through her at a glance. “No need to enter. I just have to touch your glabella.”

With that, Bai Xiang had nothing left to hesitate over. She immediately assumed the stance for “Empty-Air Sword Chan,” and began condensing heart-flow according to the Jade Spirit method.

Huh?

Xiang Xian froze again.

This “Empty-Air Sword Chan,” a kind of half-lotus sitting posture, she’d seen in other places too. Most people couldn’t put out the essence of it. Those who could had the air of white-bearded old monks.

Yet this new disciple of hers, whose appearance had nothing to do with a monk, merely sat in the posture and somehow exuded a faint touch of cool, detached Zen, and another faint trace of ethereal immortal aura—a mysterious feeling of “you can only sense it, not put it into words.”

The Bai family did, apparently, worship the Buddha.

But without a very deep grasp of scriptures and Daoist canons, you couldn’t nurture such an “unworldly air”…

Smoothing out her brows, Xiang Xian didn’t dwell on it. She focused on staring closely at Bai Xiang’s face, ready to correct her at any moment.

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To shape a Jade Spirit, the first step was to split off a portion from the mind Aspect as the Jade Spirit’s seed.

The human body has a spirit, and its name is “I.”

The Jade Spirit could be called a “second spirit” apart from that “I.” Naturally, you couldn’t use anything else as its Dao-foundation—it had to be nurtured from a portion of the true self.

According to Xiang Xian, this was the hardest step.

Because most people in this world couldn’t sense their inner landscape at all.

Even many who had Entered the Dao and awakened their mind Aspect could only vaguely, hazily feel that there was such a thing inside them. Ask them to point out exactly where it was, what position, what it looked like, and they’d be completely blind.

This was the first difficulty.

Another difficulty was that, even if you could bring your awareness down into the inner landscape, how were you supposed to control the “I”—how were you supposed to control the “mind Aspect” to split off power? That stumped another huge crowd.

The principle was simple: treat the “mind Aspect” as just another organ in the body.

People could control their muscles to stretch, could open their mouths, shake their heads, spread their fingers.

But only a very small number of people could flap their ears or twitch their nostrils at will.

As for controlling internal organs and other inner systems, that was even less possible… controlling the “mind Aspect” was harder still.

Yet this heaven-high threshold that had blocked countless others wasn’t even a roadside ditch to Bai Xiang.

Other people couldn’t flap their ears. She could.

Other people couldn’t stop their own heartbeats at will. She could.

Her soul-ability gave Bai Xiang absolute control over herself. That naturally included control over her “mind Aspect,” allowing her to complete the first step of the entry method—splitting the mind Aspect and forming a tiny seed in her inner landscape—without the slightest effort.

Then, according to the mantra, she treated the seed as a miniature human body, engraving the unique “Jade Spirit pathways” onto it. In just a few breaths, a red flame-like vertical mark lit up between Bai Xiang’s brows.

???

Xiang Xian’s eyes nearly popped out of her head.

Back then, she had taken a full year— a year —just to get to this step!

And her master had been so overjoyed they’d waved their arms around right there on the spot, even doing a rain-summoning performance in front of her!

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How long had this girl taken to fully form it?

Had it even been ten seconds?

“Teacher?”

Bai Xiang had already brought the entry method to its final stage. All that was left was the “spirit-sparking” to complete the last segment of the pathways. She called out with her eyes closed, her tone lifting slightly.

“……”

Face dark, Xiang Xian took several deep breaths, then stretched out her right hand toward Bai Xiang, using her index finger to touch that red vertical mark.

At the same time, an identical mark appeared between Xiang Xian’s own brows.

The mark flashed with a streak of red light that raced through her body, spreading down her arm and then falling with a light tap onto Bai Xiang’s glabella.

In an instant, the seed’s final pathways were completed. It was like a tiny satellite slowly orbiting the glowing mass of the mind Aspect.

And in Bai Xiang’s perception, with each rotation of the “Jade Spirit,” a vast number of control methods for the Jade Spirit naturally arose from the depths of her heart.

Suddenly, she opened her eyes. Her left hand lifted and closed in a loose grip in midair. Blood-hued qi-sha condensed in her palm and burst outward like a wave of compressed air.

“Boom!”

A dull detonation sounded through the air.

Without pausing, Bai Xiang made another “lifting hand” motion toward the side.

“Boom, boom!!”

Two more explosions rang out in quick succession.

So that’s how it is…

After personally testing the Jade Spirit’s marvelous function, Bai Xiang realized that this thing was definitely not just for doing research.

If this kind of “Form-Condensing Qi Blast” counted as a divine art, then normally, if she wanted to unleash it once, it would definitely take longer than a second. A second blast would probably have to wait until two seconds later.

But if she engraved the process into the Jade Spirit, then in battle she wouldn’t need to split her attention to control it at all. The Jade Spirit would copy-and-paste it on its own—provided her body and heart meridians could handle it, and she had enough qi to spend.

That was equivalent to doubling her combat power within the same realm.

Bai Xiang pondered.

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The principle was very simple: in a fixed unit of time, originally she could only perform one sword move or one divine art. But through the Jade Spirit’s copy-and-paste, she could instantly execute it twice.

Didn’t that mean the enemy would have to face two of her attacks in the same unit of time?

How was that not doubling?

This was absurdly broken, okay?

At last having grasped it, Bai Xiang lifted her head to look at Xiang Xian and asked, “This thing is really useful… Teacher, why did you only emphasize using it for work operations and crafting?”

She had just received a new method, and was so delighted she couldn’t help blurting the question out.

“……”

Xiang Xian didn’t respond.

She thought of that scene saying goodbye to that bald donkey Hua’an at the gates of Longhua Temple.

Hua’an had asked her then if she planned to pass the method on to Bai Xiang. With a showing-off mentality, she’d told Hua’an, “Jade Spirit, Luminous Heart isn’t a method that only specializes in engineering and crafting. If she wants, she can use it purely for combat too.”

But everyone knew that was impossible.

For a single crafting operation, every step of the process was rigidly fixed. The mental load was still bearable.

But in assisting battle, depending on the differences in her and the enemy’s movements and the changing scene, the Jade Spirit’s amount of calculation would soar into overload.

Just now hadn’t even been a real fight, yet after “copying” the move, Bai Xiang didn’t look tired at all. She was relaxed as if she’d just blown out a breath.

This was simply…

Simply…

Bai Xiang waited a while. When she saw Xiang Xian still not speaking, she realized her performance might have been a bit too shocking.

“I might be… naturally good at calculations?”

After a pause, Bai Xiang tried to comfort her.

“I think, um… specializing in engineering and crafting isn’t bad either…”