Volume 4, Chapter 160 – Co-Cultivating the Heart-Field, the Golden Light Great Seal (Two-in-One)

What is that!?

Lianyou was utterly dumbfounded.

Senior Brother had indeed warned her to watch out for the enemy using the Splitting-Light Art to turn those sword pellets into multiple projectiles, but he had never said they could split into this many.

“Go!”

Bai Zhuqing formed some inscrutable sword gesture, aimed distantly at the enemy opposite her, and the eight sword pellets immediately shot forward, blasting Lianyou in a thunderous barrage.

When you possessed absolute power sufficient to suppress your opponent, there was no need for fancy tricks.

There were simply too many of those little sword pellets, and their assault was too dense. At first, Lianyou tried to use the Six-Immortal Zither to unleash sound blades and block them, but she quickly discovered that this could stop at most two pellets. There were still six more that she simply had no way of dealing with.

“Ah!”

A frightened cry rang out from the exploding cloud of dust and smoke, and then a figure flew sideways out of it, crashing out of the arena like a rag doll, landing limply on the grass and rolling several times.

“Lianyou!”

“She actually lost that fast?”

Quite a few disciples from Zhengtian Dao rose to their feet, rushed over, and carried the defeated girl back. After examining her carefully, they found that her injuries were not severe.

There were no fatal wounds, and she had not lost any limbs. She only had multiple cuts all over her body, all caused by the violent sword qi that had scattered from the clash.

The commotion on Zhengtian Dao’s side gradually died down. These people all had good judgment. They could naturally tell that their junior sister had gotten off so lightly and merely passed out from the impact because Bai Zhuqing had shown mercy.

If your skill was inferior, there was nothing to complain about.

That little fool.

Bai Xiang’s eyelid twitched slightly, and she narrowed her golden eyes as she looked at her younger sister.

No one else in Shenming Sword Dao could see the truth of it. They simply assumed that Lianyou had fainted first, and that with Bai Zhuqing’s temperament she had found it hard to strike a lethal blow after that. Only Bai Xiang knew that this was probably not because her sister could not bring herself to do it, but because she was worried whether Bai Xiang could win on her side.

After all, Bai Zhuqing did not know exactly how strong Bai Xiang was. Although she also trusted Bai Xiang and believed she could win, deep down she still feared Zhengtian Dao’s lineup and strength.

So she did not want to make things life-and-death right from the outset. Instead, she was deliberately holding back a little, hoping that what she did here would buy Bai Xiang more room to maneuver later.

To put it bluntly, even if Bai Xiang lost, the other side might look at the mercy she had shown at the start and refrain from harming Bai Xiang too badly.

That was enough.

It was one of the few things she could do.

How naive… At this point, things had already become openly hostile. Whether mercy was shown or not had long since ceased to be something the opponents themselves got to decide.

Did she think this was children playing house? That if one side did something, the other side was obligated to respond appropriately?

Bai Xiang looked distantly at her younger sister’s back and thought that she still lacked experience in the world. She did not yet understand what it meant to “fear power without cherishing virtue,” nor what it meant that “give some people a little sunlight and they will start shining, but if you don’t show them some color, they’ll open a dyehouse themselves.”

She still needed further correction and instruction.

Did Sister see how heroic I was?

Unaware that Bai Xiang was already plotting how to deal with her once they returned, Bai Zhuqing turned toward Bai Xiang and flashed her a radiant smile.

…Still, that sincerity was genuine.

Bai Xiang’s lips dipped slightly.

For the sake of that affection, I won’t hold it too much against you.

Bai Zhuqing’s brief time to recover quickly ended, and another young sword cultivator from Zhengtian Dao came up.

He looked thin, but his limbs were unusually long, and he was tall and broad. Looking at his face, one could see a good deal of fur extending down from the sideburn area, making it obvious at a glance that he had transformed from some kind of ape.

“Zhengtian Dao, Yuan Shoujian.” The young man gave Bai Zhuqing a formal salute. “Thank you, fellow Daoist, for showing mercy.”

Oh?

This one is quite polite…

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Bai Zhuqing also raised her sword in salute. The two briefly sized each other up, but Yuan Shoujian was the first to move.

Before coming up, he had already made plans. He knew that if he opened the distance, then against the enemy’s Splitting-Light sword pellets he would have no advantage at all.

After all, there were eight of those sword pellets.

Zhengtian Dao had already discussed this sword-pellet path internally, and their conclusion was that a single sword pellet was far swifter and more nimble than an ordinary sword blade. When it changed direction mid-flight, there was no warning at all. It was practically impossible to predict, and the routes its sword strikes took were bizarre in the extreme.

And if all eight sword pellets could be controlled with precision, then they were effectively eight swords. It was the equivalent of facing an attack from eight people at once.

If that girl had gone one step further and also trained in sword formations…

Afraid that he might lose the courage to draw his sword if he thought too much about it, Yuan Shoujian did not dare let his mind wander. He bit open the skin of a medicinal pellet in his mouth and swallowed down the medicinal power, then rushed forward while drawing the broad heavy sword on his back and slashed straight at the girl.

If he could not open the distance, then close-quarters combat was the only option.

He had to drag her own body into it as well.

Maybe that would even throw those sword pellets into confusion.

Just like Sister said.

Seeing him charge in, Bai Zhuqing’s eyes lit up at once.

Oh, so you, Yuan Shoujian, have your little strategist, and I, Bai Zhuqing, don’t?

Impossible.

Before she went on stage, Bai Xiang had carefully analyzed the opposing lineup for her and given her a number of corresponding strategies.

The one who had told her to split into eight sword pellets in the very first match and end it quickly was Bai Xiang.

The one who had warned her that the second opponent would definitely close the distance and force her into close combat, telling her to be careful, was also Bai Xiang.

And with the two of them having both cultivated the Jade Spirit Mingxin Method, Bai Zhuqing had no chance of panicking in battle. Far from being afraid, she instead met Yuan Shoujian head-on, drew her longsword, and the two blades smashed together in midair.

Clang!

Amid a shower of sparks and a ringing blast, the Qingwu Sword and the broad heavy sword crossed more than a dozen times in midair, and Bai Zhuqing did not take a single step back.

Her body is that strong too?

Lianyou’s injuries were not serious, and she had already barely regained consciousness. Seeing this scene, her eyes widened again, and she no longer dared harbor even the slightest resentment.

Yuan Shoujian was the prized new disciple recently accepted by Zhengtian Dao’s leading figure, Immortal Venerable Haoran, also known as the Ten-Extremes Daoist. His original form was a forest ape demon.

Long before he had taken a master, even before he had been tainted by demonic power and awakened intelligence, this ape demon had spent all day every day waving branches in the forest as swords, figuring out set after set of sword techniques on his own. On top of that, his arms and legs were extremely long, and his strength immense. Once he closed with an opponent, many demon beasts and senior brothers with greater cultivation than his own could not match him in direct combat.

And yet Bai Zhuqing could actually trade swords with an opponent like that head-on, even to the point of not yielding a single step.

There was not the slightest room for trickery here. This was genuine skill, genuine hard power.

My loss wasn’t unjust at all.

“What a fine Vibration Art.”

At the edge of the wilderness arena, some others were also watching the match. Seeing this sight, they narrowed their eyes, and their expressions shifted.

Zhengtian Dao and Shenming Sword Dao were both formidable enemies. After all, there were rumors that Wang Xiu’s disappearance was related to Bai Xiang, and on the Venerable Net some people suspected that she possessed the strength to break into the top ten of the Heaven’s Pride List. Even if Shenming Sword Dao consisted of her alone, they had no choice but to take it seriously.

That was why many sects had sent people to watch on site.

Only by watching in person could one see more of the details.

Most of these people were at Immortal Venerable level, and naturally they could all tell that Bai Zhuqing was able to match Yuan Shoujian’s strength not only because her body cultivation had progressed far, and her flesh and bones were sturdy, but even more because her technical methods were especially exquisite.

Every time Yuan Shoujian’s heavy slash fell, at the instant his blade collided with the Qingwu Sword, the massive force transmitted through his sword would be guided away by the Qingwu Sword through faint tremors and vibration.

On the surface, it looked as if both sides were unleashing their full strength in a violent clash each time. In reality, it would be remarkable if even sixty percent of Yuan Shoujian’s power was actually getting through.

“That is because her foundational method is profound.”

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“It’s not as if no one has ever used vibration as a method, but this is the first time I’ve seen someone integrate it so perfectly into the path of sword strikes.”

“And those sword pellets, too. It isn’t as if no one ever tried to reconstruct them before, but they all failed. Their subtlety clearly lies in that new method.”

“Exactly. The power condensed by the Path of Qi seems especially adept at fine control.”

“Her qi presence is at most only at the level of the lightning tribulation. If she keeps growing from here, won’t she become another Bai Zhixing…”

The spectators kept discussing among themselves.

And the situation in the arena suddenly shifted again. The sword-wielding girl found a gap when Yuan Shoujian was recovering his breath, flicked her hilt, and the sword blade curled forward with a rustling motion, splitting into eight sword pellets in midair. At the same time, she used eight corresponding move-formulas from the Void-Imagination Divine Sword, slamming them fiercely into the broad greatsword.

Boom!

Another cloud of smoke erupted in the arena, and Yuan Shoujian’s figure flew backward, following in Lianyou’s footsteps.

So this is how fighting someone really works…

Watching another crowd of Zhengtian disciples rush out and drag Yuan Shoujian back, Bai Zhuqing steadied her breathing with effort, only to feel a strange insight surging up inside her heart.

So when fighting, there is no need to think so much. You only need to seize one chance, one opening, and that alone is enough to decide the outcome.

At that moment, she thought again of Bai Xiang’s teaching.

“The path of combat isn’t complicated.”

“At its most distilled, it’s nothing more than keeping your opponent’s attacks from hitting you, while finding the chance to knock them down.”

“If you can block it, you live. If you can’t, you die.”

“It’s not that circuitous.”

Then I really do understand this feeling now…

Bai Zhuqing slowly closed her eyes and used the Jade Spirit to replay every single technique she had just used within her mind.

It was dangerous.

It was thrilling.

Now I finally know why Sister is such a combat maniac.

This feeling really is… intoxicating.

With that thought, Bai Zhuqing simply lifted her left foot and tucked it beneath the crook of her right knee. Sitting cross-legged in midair in a Sword Contemplation posture, eyes closed, fingers forming a sword gesture, with eight little sword pellets slowly circling around her, she truly looked every bit like an expert.

Oh?

The corner of Bai Xiang’s eye twitched again.

She actually has that kind of disposition too.

Was it something she already possessed herself, or was it…

Bai Xiang was not sure, but after Bai Zhuqing stepped onto the stage, there were too many places where she was imitating her. Even in terms of temperament, she was imitating her so closely that Bai Xiang had to wonder whether something had happened when the two of them cultivated the soul-vision of the Body-scape together, whether during that “spiritual exchange” Bai Zhuqing had somehow synchronized with and received some of Bai Xiang’s own insights into combat.

If so, that should be a good thing.

Bai Xiang pondered.

Qing’er’s greatest shortcoming was her severe lack of combat experience. The Jade Spirit Mingxin Method could not make up for that. If she had gained this kind of insight, that was an excellent thing.

Then after this battle, she would probably become famous throughout the world too.

Perhaps there would even be people who came specifically to take her as a master and learn her sword-pellet path.

Not to mention the many people around them, even many disciples of Shenming Sword Dao were marveling at their Little Senior Sister’s dazzling performance. The match in the arena continued, and Bai Zhuqing sent three more Zhengtian disciples off the platform one after another. Counting Lianyou and Yuan Shoujian, that made five consecutive wins.

Her momentum was unmatched for a time, but she herself was now gasping for breath, her chest rising and falling. Clearly, her consumption had also been considerable.

The Dao-Void Martial Tournament was in truth a life-and-death struggle involving tribulation struggle, and its rules were extremely loose in every respect. Everyone was allowed to take medicine in the gaps between bouts to recover their bodies. So Bai Zhuqing also took out a few pellets and swallowed them, but the effects were not so fast to appear.

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She was not Bai Xiang after all.

Bai Xiang had soul-abilities. The moment medicinal power entered her body, it came entirely under her control. She could digest it completely in an instant and even refine away the medicinal toxins and residue. Bai Zhuqing could not do that.

On top of that, among the three Origin Realms, she had only visibly refined the Hidden Field Orifice. That could only help her recover qi faster. The blood and vitality she had consumed still had to recover slowly, so she could no longer be said to be at her peak state.

“I’ll go.”

Someone suddenly stood up from among Zhengtian Dao’s disciples. It was a cold-faced young man in a plain gray robe with a cropped haircut.

He held a bamboo staff in his hand. His face was so fair and delicate that it was almost feminine. He had stood there earlier without drawing any notice at all, making quite a few Zhengtian disciples inwardly surprised, thinking that they did not remember seeing this person before.

“So it’s Junior Brother Zhou.”

Chang Hongyuan’s voice sounded out.

“That works too.”

“It wouldn’t do to let her win too many bouts. Then I’ll have to trouble Junior Brother Zhou.”

Huh?

Senior Brother actually called him Junior Brother in public?

The Zhengtian disciples were even more surprised, because that form of address was not used casually. Chang Hongyuan was acting as team leader this time, and his status was already equivalent to that of a sect elder. When directing people, he usually called them by name directly. There was no way he should still be calling anyone Junior Brother the way he used to.

So if he addressed this person that way, there was only one explanation. This Junior Brother Zhou was a disciple the Ten-Extremes Daoist had taken in recently.

And not an ordinary disciple like Yuan Shoujian either. He was very likely a direct disciple.

That was truly remarkable.

How long had it been since Zhengtian Dao’s sect master had taken a direct disciple?

If memory served, it had been more than twenty years.

As the crowd watched Junior Brother Zhou walk onto the stage with a bamboo staff in hand, excitement involuntarily rose on their faces.

If that was the case, then that sword-pellet demoness definitely had no chance now.

And what kind of thing is this now…

Bai Zhuqing opened her eyes and looked at the “blind monk with a staff” walking up, suspicion appearing on her face as well.

She could hardly be blamed for thinking that, because although Junior Brother Zhou had left a little hair, his demeanor and bearing were far too much like the monks and clerics she had seen before.

And the rhythm and posture with which he walked using the staff made him look just like a blind man.

“Zhengtian Dao, Zhou Yi.”

Standing more than ten paces away, Zhou Yi saluted Bai Zhuqing, one hand holding the staff, the other raised upright as he bowed slightly.

So he really is from the Buddhist line.

Bai Zhuqing understood and returned the greeting, standing properly with sword in hand.

The two faced off. Then the girl’s figure blurred, and in the next instant she was already behind Zhou Yi.

Things were different now.

Bai Zhuqing understood it clearly in her heart.

My strength is no longer at its peak. Only my momentum remains strong. I cannot meet him the way I did in the earlier matches, taking stillness against motion. I have to attack first, press him with momentum, and seek a quick victory. Only then is there room to maneuver.

With that thought, Bai Zhuqing abandoned ordinary sword momentum from the outset and directly sent the eight circling sword pellets crashing at her opponent. Under the Jade Spirit’s calculations, each pellet was arranged into a move-formula from the Void-Imagination Divine Sword, sealing off all of Zhou Yi’s routes of retreat.

That was basically how she had won the last two matches.

She had found an opening, sent out eight swords at once, and unleashed a burst her opponent could neither react to nor block, sweeping them bodily from the stage, leaving them either unconscious or unable to fight.

Faced with the onrushing sword pellets, Zhou Yi merely pressed his lips together in a smile. He did not dodge at all. Instead, he opened his mouth into a strange shape.

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What is that?

Bai Zhuqing’s eyes widened. At close range, she watched his handsome face gradually twist, and from his throat there burst an earthshaking roar.

“Hah!”

The air exploded and wild winds howled.

The eight sword pellets, together with Bai Zhuqing herself, were blown back a short distance, only to descend again with even fiercer momentum.

“That’s a Buddhist technique?”

One of the spectators questioned it.

“Did that old Daoist Ten Extremes steal a disciple from the Buddhists?”

“No, it’s not that simple.”

Above the high platform, Daoist Luoying stared fixedly at the battle below. More precisely, he was staring fixedly at Zhou Yi.

What do you fools know…

Those lung functions…

That surging smoke of blood and vitality…

Can’t you see it?

This is an unparalleled genius who has visibly refined both the Hidden Field Orifice and the Hidden Heart Orifice.

Another ringing blast sounded in the arena. The eight sword pellets had once again tried to break through, only to be stopped outside by Zhou Yi’s second roar.

Sound waves… They can actually take visible form?

Bai Zhuqing gritted her teeth.

There was no telling what mystery lay in Zhou Yi’s roar, but together with the dark red blood and vitality circling his body, it manifested as something like a great red bell, wrapping him inside like a turtle shell. For the moment, she had no way of breaking it.

Even the sharpness of my sword pellets can’t smash through it. Didn’t Sister say that the qi of the Path of Qi is far more condensed than other kinds of energy, and that at the same realm it shouldn’t lose out?

This won’t do.

Should I try going from underground instead?

The instant that thought arose, a warning suddenly flared in Bai Zhuqing’s heart.

At that moment she was precisely in the middle of a brief lull, having failed to break through and slowed her assault to recover her breath. Fixing her eyes on the interior of that great bell, she saw Zhou Yi forming a hand seal, and it was shockingly familiar, one finger pointed upward, one downward.

This is…

Seated in the distance, Bai Xiang suddenly focused, a sharp gleam erupting from her eyes.

But it was too late.

As Zhou Yi’s hand seal formed, the essence, qi, blood and vitality around him, even all of his momentum, suddenly contracted and vanished.

Then in the very next instant, the void before him twisted violently. In its center appeared a huge hand seal, gold wrapped in red, and it came crashing down viciously toward the girl at point-blank range.

How is this possible…

Bai Zhuqing’s mind went blank.

At the critical moment, she suddenly gritted her teeth and mobilized all the qi in her body, forcibly driving the Splitting-Light Art. The eight trembling sword pellets violently tore apart into sixteen sword pellets and slammed into that great golden hand seal.

Boom!

The sonic blast rippled out.

That single strike completely shattered the platform. Countless clouds of dust and fragments of stone flew in all directions, fully obscuring the scene within the arena.