Volume 4, Chapter 94 – The Spreading

While Xiang Xian and Bai Zhuqing were studying the Dao in the back mountain, the others of the Bai family inside the dojo were hardly idle either.

There was now definite news regarding Bai Xiang’s third uncle, Bai Qingmin, and his family. They would soon be taking a connecting flight to Zhennan Circuit. Bai Shengju was at home every day, craning his neck in anticipation. He was either arranging this or setting up that, and had even moved quite a few old objects from the ancestral Shenming residence into the new house.

Bai Guanshan, as always, was coordinating cross-border capital together with the provincial administration, managing its investment into Maozhou. Bai Lianzhou had also stepped up the swordsmanship assessments for the dojo’s disciples.

An atmosphere was quietly changing. Any observant disciple could feel it, as though with every passing day the oxygen in the air was growing thinner, pressing down on people little by little until they could hardly breathe.

In the disciples’ convalescence compound specially set up on the mountain, Liu Yong had long since recovered enough to walk again.

When he had been abducted and taken away before, he had not actually suffered any concrete harm along the way. It was almost as if those people had known exactly how valuable a body like his was. Even when they treated him roughly now and then, it remained only superficial. The bruises and scrapes from that had healed long ago.

Because of that, some of the disciples had mocked him quite a bit, saying that someone outside had taken a fancy to him and hired men to kidnap him and “deliver him to their bed.”

Liu Yong was naturally extremely displeased about that, but he had also heard from Dongzi that the one who had ultimately brought him back had actually been Dao Master Bai Xiang.

He himself was nothing more than a newly admitted disciple. Even if Broken Sword had some connection to Bai Xiang, being accepted into the sect was already grace beyond measure. When Liu Yong heard this, he was overwhelmed with fear and gratitude. For a time, he had no real heart to argue with the other disciples, and was unusually quiet these days.

As for those people, they were only jealous that he and Dongzi had gotten in through the back door at the outset. Seeing that he neither argued nor defended himself, they found it boring, and after gathering around for a few days, they dispersed.

Life had to go on in the end. Everyone had so many things to do. No one was idle enough to keep their thoughts fixed on someone else forever.

To say nothing of anything else, the sect-wide tournament was about to be held again soon. Quite a few people were eager to show what they could do, hoping to win a good ranking and praying that some teacher or elder would take notice of them and accept them into the inner sect.

But that had nothing to do with Liu Yong anymore. Recently, his heart had been restless and agitated, and he found it difficult to settle into meditation. His path of cultivation had grown obstructed. On top of that, the disciples assigned to watch over him had warned him that during this period, he could only remain inside the convalescence compound and was not allowed to step one foot outside its gates.

He knew this was probably meant as protection for him, but he still felt it was making too much of things.

Surely there isn’t really some great figure staring at me all day, wanting to abduct me again?

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Wasn’t the previous incident just an accident?

And wasn’t my safe return entirely thanks to the Dao Master’s protection…?

In the afternoon, under the blazing sun, Liu Yong lay in the courtyard on nothing but a sheet of coarse cloth. Beside him, spread out in a dense patchwork, was a large quantity of medicinal herbs set out to dry.

The convalescence compound also had the job of preparing medicinal meals for all the disciples of the Dao. Over the past few days, the disciples here had grown familiar with Liu Yong and simply handed him the drying work to manage, only coming by occasionally to check in.

“Yong’er! Yong’er!!”

A voice came shouting from afar. It was Zhu Sheng. At some point, this brat had apparently started copying Dongzi too. Once he opened his mouth, there was no seriousness to be found in it.

“What is it?” Liu Yong was already numb to this and could not be bothered to waste the effort correcting the way he was addressed.

“You’re still lying here sunning yourself! There’s going to be a sword tournament before long, and you’re not hurrying to get ready?” Zhu Sheng said in a tone of utter heartbreak, as though it were his youth Liu Yong was wasting.

“What am I preparing for?” Liu Yong replied woodenly. “It has nothing to do with me anyway.”

“How does it have nothing to do with you!” Zhu Sheng glared. “Don’t tell me you think the sword tournament I’m talking about is just the sect tournament?”

Isn’t it?

Liu Yong was finally somewhat surprised.

This… setting aside Zhennan, in the entire territory of Maozhou Prefecture there was only one Shenming Sword Dao that had a major tournament coming up. If it wasn’t that, what else could it be?

“Do you know why our sect is holding a tournament?” Zhu Sheng leaned in, looking mysterious as could be.

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Liu Yong shook his head. “I don’t.”

“It’s not to choose inner sect disciples. It’s for something even bigger!” Zhu Sheng jabbed at the air with his index finger. “They’re selecting people to go take part in the Nine Prefectures Sword Meet, brother! Don’t tell me you’re willing to miss a chance like that.”

“The Nine Prefectures Sword Meet?”

“Yeah. It’s held every August. Nine Mountains-and-Rivers-ranked… well, now we have to count Shenming Sword Dao too, so that makes ten Mountains-and-Rivers-ranked dojos competing. It’s the grand event of the year. Don’t tell me you’re not planning to go?”

“And I’ve also dug up some news. They say this year’s Sword Meet is different from previous years.” Once Zhu Sheng got going, he could not stop. “Those Void Realm people showing up all over the different provinces and regions recently, you know about them, right?”

Liu Yong nodded. “I know.”

“They’re supposedly going too!” Zhu Sheng said, nodding so hard he looked excited enough to explode. “That means this year’s Sword Meet won’t just be an internal war among the Mountains-and-Rivers dojos. It’ll also have an element of resisting outside challengers!”

Liu Yong found it odd. “Where did you hear all this inside information?”

Wasn’t this brat, like him, stuck on the mountain all day long?

I’m not allowed out of the compound. Can you somehow go down the mountain?

“It’s all online.” Zhu Sheng looked at him the way one might look at a primitive caveman. “Yong’er, you really ought to learn how to get online…”

After all, even Zhang Donglai knows how to use the internet now.

Liu Yong found that a little hard to take.

It wasn’t as though I’d come out of some ape tribe. Before, Maozhou’s internet had just been cut off. How was I supposed to know they’d loosened things up again lately?

He quickly went to his room, found the phone he had not taken out to check in quite some time, and after fiddling with it a bit, successfully got online. Sure enough, discussions were everywhere on the web.

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He went straight to the hottest information platform and found that the pinned post was titled: “This Year’s Nine Prefectures Sword Meet Will Be Jointly Held with Void Realm People and Renamed the Dao-Void Martial Tournament.”

The post itself sounded very convincing, and the comments below it were a complete battlefield of competing opinions.

“Our Yu Emperor Sacred Dynasty has no need to care about those lost barbarians! How can the sacred Nine Prefectures Sword Meet be sullied by outsiders? No! I absolutely refuse!”

“And who the hell are you supposed to be? Forgot how many dojos got challenged and crushed some time back? Less than a ten percent win rate and you’re still barking here?”

“They say the Yu Emperor Sacred Dynasty stands as its own school, but really it only benefited from the fact that neither the western nor eastern foreign lands had a Sword Dao system. Now the Void Realm people have returned, bringing methods and systems no weaker than Sword Dao. We ought to face this with humility. I’ve heard that some Void Realm dojos have already thrown open their gates to accept disciples…”

“Exactly what that fellow Daoist said! These past days we’ve been beaten so badly it’s embarrassing, and people are still talking about sacred state martial arts? I’d say it’s more like closing the country and locking ourselves in!”

“Careful what you say upstairs! Don’t get the rest of us banned from the internet!”

The discussion had actually reached this point?

Liu Yong scrolled through several threads and was left dumbfounded by what he was reading.

With how tightly Great Yu had always controlled information, the fact that remarks like these could actually be posted was itself deeply unnatural.

He immediately realized that this was a major signal. It meant the Court had intentionally loosened control over public discussion in this area. That, in turn, could indirectly confirm the truth of the pinned post: the Nine Prefectures Sword Meet really was going to be jointly held with the Void Realm people.

As for anything deeper than that, Liu Yong was already a little afraid to think about it.

For example, had the Court loosened things up on purpose, or had it concluded that it could not possibly keep control of public opinion and therefore had no choice but to relax restrictions?

If it were the latter, then wouldn’t that mean the Court no longer had the power to dominate the present situation, and could only let those Void Realm people who had descended upon them do as they pleased, allowing them to take part in the Nine Prefectures Sword Meet?

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Then can we even win?

The thought came to Liu Yong instinctively.

But then he suddenly froze.

No… wait. That dog emperor let the Qi lands suffer from demon calamities unchecked, and even when the Southern King rebelled again and again, he never sent troops to save the people. Why should I care about his realm?

This Great Yu is his Great Yu. What does it have to do with me, Liu Yong?

He did not know that, at the very moment he thought that, another strand of purple-gold aura rose from above his head.

The sunlight was brilliant at the moment, and an ordinary person would never have noticed such a detail.

But Zhu Sheng had been staring at Liu Yong’s outward appearance the whole time, and when the purple-gold stream rose up, he very clearly lifted his eyes.

Then he pressed his lips together and reached out to place a hand on Liu Yong’s shoulder.

“Well? Tempted now, aren’t you?”

Liu Yong really was tempted, but he was still hesitating. “But they said I’m not allowed to go out and move around…”

Zhu Sheng cut him off. “Once the Dao Master comes out of seclusion, she’ll take us there herself. If she’s leading us, are you really worried about your safety?”

“Hurry up and cultivate. When the time comes, together with Zhang Donglai, the three of us will go as a group.”

“We’ll piss off all those jealous bastards. Let them stew in envy!”