Volume 2, Chapter 70 – Sudden Enlightenment

Leng Qiu’s defeat hung over the hearts of every Yu person present like a bank of dark clouds.

After all, no matter how many old grudges once existed between the ancient Qiyun Academy and the Taiqing Institute, these days they all counted as people of Yu.

Watching the mortal enemy they’d been fighting all this way get beaten by an outsider—and beaten this fast, this miserably—many people felt incredibly conflicted inside, with not a shred of joy.

Wen Qingxuan’s eyes were bulging in the broadcast room. He couldn’t wrap his head around it—before the tournament, they’d gathered data from all sides and analyzed who the biggest threat would be. Yet under that Luohou youth’s hand, that “greatest rival” had barely managed two moves at best?

Saying two moves was already giving Leng Qiu too much credit. She’d basically lost on the very first exchange. The gap was just too shocking!

But a match was a match; it wouldn’t slow down just because the audience was emotional.

A lot of people were still stuck in the shock of the scene just now, not yet recovered, when in the arena the second match between Xia Ran and Zhao Jinyan had already begun.

Zhao Jinyan, tall and broad-shouldered, stepped onto the platform with a dark expression. On that last step, he glanced toward the edge of the field, staring at the unconscious girl lying in their master’s arms.

Xia Ran, for his part, looked even worse than he did. He’d watched Leng Qiu walk up the whole way, his mind completely off his opponent. His steps and breathing were a complete mess.

“How confident are you?”

Standing only a few meters away, Zhao Jinyan directly asked Xia Ran.

Xia Ran was silent for a moment. He turned his head and stared fixedly at Bolou by the side of the field, but with a different look in his eyes now. He didn’t answer for a long while.

“I know my own situation.” Zhao Jinyan lowered his head, speaking to himself. “I’m stronger than Junior Sister, but only so much stronger. There’s no way I can pull something that crazy off.”

“He’s trained both ‘Tiger Soul’ and the Earth-Heart Stance at the same time.” Xia Ran finally spoke, his voice sounding hoarse. “Even I didn’t expect those two together would have that kind of might.”

There had been rumor floating around for a while now, saying that he, Xia Ran, as chief of the Sword Institute, had spent over a year refusing to join any tournaments and hiding inside the Dao grounds just so he could break through to Purple Blood. And since he’d actually come out to compete this time, odds were extremely high he’d succeeded, with at least two thousand years of dao-age on him.

Those people really hadn’t guessed wrong.

Little Qiu was close to that level, but hadn’t fully broken through to Purple Blood yet. Zhao Jinyan was probably less than half a step away from Purple Blood; Xia Ran figured he could break through whenever he felt like it—it was just a matter of whether he wanted to or not.

But if you didn’t reach Purple Core, what use was a little breakthrough like that?

At most it meant your strength became a bit more condensed, and every aspect went up a notch on average. It still couldn’t compare with “Tiger Soul” in the slightest. The difference between the two was truly enormous.

“I can lose to you.” Zhao Jinyan’s lips didn’t move; his voice came from deep in his belly. “As long as you can avenge her… at a time like this, we can’t be wasting strength fighting each other.”

He had no romantic feelings for Leng Qiu, but he still couldn’t stand seeing his lively, adorable Junior Sister humiliated so miserably. A violent fire was crushed down in his chest.

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“Well? Xia Ran!”

He rounded his eyes.

“As long as you say you’re confident, I’ll lose to you! I’ll let you keep your state so you can go kill him! Hurry up and answer me!”

Xia Ran stayed silent.

The truth was, he wasn’t confident at all.

But Zhao Jinyan had even less chance. Right now, the two of them basically had no choice; they could only grit their teeth and send Xia Ran up.

Under Zhao Jinyan’s earnest gaze, he gave the tiniest of nods, almost impossible to see.

Zhao Jinyan’s spirits lifted. When the green light lit, he let out a furious shout. Purple qi roared out of him, gathering behind his back into the illusory Aspect of a divine bird with white feathers, long legs, a phoenix crown, and a curled tail.

“Li—!”

The divine bird flapped its wings, kicking up flying sand and rolling stones all around the platform. A wild gale converged around it, and in the blink of an eye, the divine bird was already diving down at Xia Ran.

Zhao Jinyan was wrapped up inside it.

The divine bird’s long beak that sliced through the air was the twisted serpent-curve sword in his hand!

Starting off with his ultimate move right out the gate!

Cries of surprise rose from all around the field, but the teachers from Qizhou and Qingze alone wore awkward expressions.

Of course they could see what Zhao Jinyan was trying to do.

But at this point, they really had no standing to stop him.

When you got down to it, the Qizhou–Qingze rivalry no longer mattered much in this day and age.

Of the Thirteen Taiqing Swords, six had fallen in Qidi, but of the Qiyun Ten, five had died in the Jing River!

All those blood-soaked grudges had been buried in those twelve years. After that, the two Dao grounds still had grievances and entanglements, but no more crucial figures had died. Instead, under pressure from Yujing and other forces, they had gradually smoothed things out and come to jointly accept the concept of the “Nine Provinces”.

What were the Nine Provinces?

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Their name was Yu.

If everyone acknowledged themselves as Yu people, acknowledged that they belonged to the same identity, then in front of an external enemy, those old grudges simply weren’t important anymore.

Right now, the most important thing was to defeat the Luohou delegation, and let Great Yu hold the leading seat in the land-reclamation campaign!

“Zheng!”

Xia Ran drew his sword, locking it tight against the “beak”. A spray of dazzling golden sparks burst out in the arena, mixed with an intense, violent metallic roar that made many people clap their hands over their ears. They couldn’t even see the figures in the field.

“Do it!”

Zhao Jinyan took the chance to roar at Xia Ran.

Gritting his teeth, Xia Ran jerked the twisted serpent-curve sword aside with a single slash. His whole body erupted with a savage force, even his short, cropped hair standing on end, and under Zhao Jinyan’s astonished—and then delighted—gaze, he slammed a fist straight into his chest.

“Pff!”

Zhao Jinyan felt a wild, blazing energy pour in through his chest. The qi pathways of his meridians throughout his body were churned into a mess. With his qi thrown entirely into chaos, he couldn’t resist even if he wanted to. A spray of blood mist spewed out from his mouth as he flew away.

“Hm?”

“So he’s trained the Earth-Heart Stance too?”

The old monk in the python-embroidered robe had been sitting below with his eyes half closed. At this, his eyes flew open.

“Bolou.” Smiling, he turned to the side. “You can start warming up a little.”

This definitely counted as an unexpected variable, but he wasn’t worried in the slightest.

Only he truly knew what it meant when “Tiger Soul” combined with the Earth-Heart Stance. To put it bluntly, with those two trump cards, Bolou’s strength was already infinitely close to that of a Purple Core cultivator!

One glare and his opponent would faint; they wouldn’t be able to withstand a single move or strike!

If that wasn’t the difference of a major realm, what was it?

At least to those in Condensing the Aspect, Bolou and a Purple Core were no different—they both held absolute dominance!

The dark-skinned youth was still sitting over to the side without speaking.

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His eyes went dull and then clear by turns, only showing confusion at the rarest of moments.

The second match was decided very quickly. Xia Ran won without the slightest suspense.

“I underestimated you…”

Face swollen and bruised, Zhao Jinyan lay on the ground, looking at the tall, lanky young man standing beside him, looking down.

“I thought I’d have to go easy on you…”

“Didn’t expect you to be hiding this deep…”

Xia Ran gave a small smile and reached out to pull him up.

His smile was very forced. Zhao Jinyan could see it now as well. His joy settled down, and he frowned. “Even this isn’t enough to fight him?”

Xia Ran could only press his lips together. “All I can say is, I’ll try my best.”

“There’s something off about all this.” Zhao Jinyan said quietly, speaking from his diaphragm. “I don’t buy that those swamp-slaves could raise this kind of ferocious tiger!”

I don’t buy it either.

Xia Ran shook his head.

He figured a lot of people didn’t believe it—because it really didn’t make sense.

They lacked a visualization chart, their inheritance was incomplete, and they’d been assimilated by Luohou’s local culture on top of that. And even like this, they could still bring the four divine abilities together into “Tiger Soul”? Then what had the rest of them been training all these years?

The Earth-Heart Stance came along once every fifty years, but in all of history, “Tiger Soul” had only appeared twice!

Their interpretations of Yu-script classics were completely at odds with orthodox readings, going in totally the opposite direction. Training off of that, shouldn’t they be getting weaker the more they practiced? How had they gotten this strong?

The reasoning was plain as day, but reality was this brutal. Whether they accepted it or not, there was nothing they could do.

Supporting Zhao Jinyan as they went down from the field, Xia Ran listened to the applause and cheers all around them, and simply couldn’t bring himself to smile.

On the other side, Old Man Wang Ran had already hurried back in a fluster to find Xiang Xian, dragging her into the passageway to discuss things.

Don’t tell me in the end I’m going to have to fight.

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Bai Xiang glanced that way, feeling a bad premonition.

She felt she understood her own master’s temperament pretty well. Right now, Xiang Xian was most likely selling out this disciple of hers, to wring more benefits out of Old Man Wang.

Bai Xiang herself didn’t really care, but she was quite curious what excuse those two planned to use to throw her into the mix.

After all, there was no such thing in the procedure—nowhere did it say that the champion had to fight an extra friendly match afterward or anything… there was simply no reason for her to appear, even as an exchange student.

Right now, her mind was mainly replaying Bolou and Xia Ran’s footwork and movements.

From Bolou’s match with Leng Qiu onward, she’d felt some of those movements looked very familiar.

Only when Xia Ran and Zhao Jinyan started fighting and acted out the Earth-Heart Stance more thoroughly and deeply did Bai Xiang finally form a rough idea.

Might as well try…

Letting her thoughts sink, she ignored the fact that this was an arena under the gaze of over twenty thousand people, and simply sat upright at the edge of the field and closed her eyes. In her mind’s flow, scenes of movements and images began to play out one after another.

This was assistance from the “Jade Spirit”.

All of the movements came from The Tiger-Subduing Arhat Scripture. The set of fists, the set of staff work, and the set of sword techniques were actually taken apart by her right then and there, every move either broken apart or recombined. Following the movements of the Earth-Heart Stance, they were re-enacted anew. In her inner landscape, they pieced together into a vast tableau, like a mountain-sized ferocious tiger roaring up at the heavens.

Roar—!!!

The tiger turned its head, a pair of blood-red eyes meeting Bai Xiang’s.

With a thought, Bai Xiang sent her spirit-soul pouring in through its eyes. When she opened her own eyes again, it was as if heaven and earth had changed. It felt more like she herself had become the giant tiger, overlooking the human world from the tiger’s own point of view.

Countless words, thoughts, scriptures, and formulas surfaced in her heart, turning into Sanskrit chanting that echoed in a cycle.

She finally understood.

Feed the tiger with your own body.

Trade for the tiger soul.

So this was what “Tiger-Subduing Arhat” truly meant.