Volume 4, Chapter 183 – Forceful Clash(Two-in-One)

“Invites the Sword Dao… to meet its death?”

Chu Weiping’s expression stiffened slightly, but only for that moment. He soon lowered his sword salute. The green blade in his hand gradually dropped to one side, his plain white sleeves spreading as he stepped forward toward Bai Xiang in her black dress.

He did not walk quickly. Each step was only as long as his height and natural stride required. But those watching on-site, Bai Zhuqing, Xiang Xian, and the others, all felt a vast pressure steadily gathering into shape.

Especially people like Xiang Xian. Some among them had taken part in the campaign against Chu Weiping back then. Looking at this scene before them, feeling this pressure in their emotions, countless fragments of memory rose involuntarily in their minds. Their bodies, too, began trembling without their willing it, and they could not tell whether it was simply excitement or fear.

“I have practiced the sword for a hundred years, and for it I cast away everything.”

As he walked, Chu Weiping spoke in a low voice.

“Human bonds, morality, even worldly emotion. Whoever stands in the way of this road will meet only one end: I will cut them down with a single sword stroke.”

“I understand why you would say such a thing… because I understand deeply that this road is far from correct.”

“In many cases, the harm it causes is even greater than the good it brings.”

“You have seen those distortions, those miserable scenes, so your heart is filled with anger and resentment. That is only natural.”

“But, Bai Xiang.”

As he spoke, he finally called Bai Xiang by name for the first time.

Those cold eyes, devoid of even a trace of feeling, shifted back onto her face and locked with her golden pupils.

“If you want to survive in this man-eating world, ‘keeping to the proper order’ is not the crucial factor.”

“I am only saying this because you gifted me those insights.” He lowered his eyes. “Because I can also tell that you and I are the same kind of person.”

“To see someone of your generation rise up at the very end of the Sword Dao.”

“To meet you in an open contest upon this final, grandest stage.”

“I think I should be… very happy.”

His words were casual and disordered. Among the spectators, quite a few highly cultivated cultivators managed to catch them and hear them clearly, yet for the moment they still could not grasp the deeper meaning.

But Bai Xiang understood.

Just as Chu Weiping understood her, she also understood this old man carrying a sword.

Why had she given Qin Wuyang her insights into the Path of Qi back then?

At that time, before she had begun the Luohou expedition, the greatest threat standing before Shenming Dojo had happened to be the two Sword Lords.

So did that mean she had not known Qin Wuyang might use it to break through into a new realm, perhaps even pass the method on to his true body and create an even more invincible monster of a Sword Lord?

No. She had known all of that.

And she had still done it, only because she felt the greater environment was unbearably dull.

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On the surface, Sword Dao was flourishing, exalted as the national art. But in reality, every high-level cultivator carried flaws. Aside from anomalies like Qin Wuyang, the others did not even have the ability to commit all of their power to a life-and-death battle.

Perhaps it was because of their scruples. Perhaps it was because they needed to suppress the demonic power inside them before it ran wild. So when she stood on that summit and looked out in all directions, all she could see were one struggling soul after another, trapped within distortion. They could not give her what she wanted.

What she wanted was the flourishing of the immortal path.

She admitted that she was greedy. She wanted immortality, but she also wanted to experience life and death while pursuing it.

What she wanted to see was this: the world’s top cultivators all joining this road, countless geniuses, famous figures, heroes, and newcomers pouring in their sweat as they studied this heaven-reaching path together with her.

That meant the qi method had to spread outward.

She did not care about secrecy, nor did she mind if Qin Wuyang grew even stronger after gaining insight into qi methods.

She would only be even more excited. The excitement came from the prospect of seeing new possibilities emerge from masters like Qin Wuyang and Chu Weiping. The moment she thought of them using her gift to forge something new, to temper an even sharper sword, the moment she thought that such a thing might happen, the excitement deep within her rose to its utmost peak.

I pursue immortality with a heart that seeks death. Only that way can I feel that my immortality is living immortality, rather than immortal death.

And on this point alone, Chu Weiping… his mentality was the same as hers.

So of everyone there, only Bai Xiang, and only Bai Xiang at the very first moment, understood what her opponent meant.

Chu Weiping’s words could be summarized simply like this: he did not want her sword to become trapped within the narrative of the mundane world, because the narrative of the mundane world was unworthy of it. He was worried that would lower the quality of Bai Xiang’s sword.

It suited him perfectly.

Taishang cuts away emotion; by preserving life, one enters sainthood.

Speak only of being true to the sword in one’s hand.

He truly was a man of utter sincerity.

“Take care.”

Once the distance had closed to within five meters, Chu Weiping suddenly gave a warning.

“This is… the first sword.”

Before the words had even finished, afterimages were already trailing behind his figure.

And they were strangely, indescribably strange. Just as Bai Xiang had done before when facing the God-Slaying Sword Array, when facing Zhang Dai, these afterimages appeared in reverse.

The afterimages were in front; the real body came behind.

Each step Chu Weiping took looked like it was crashing into an afterimage and merging as one with the image before him.

“That is…?”

Daoist Luoying had also come to watch in person. He had originally worn a dismissive look, but the moment he saw this, his eyes flew wide open and his pupils shrank to needle points.

The collision came without the slightest warning.

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Not a single person in the arena, including him, saw how Chu Weiping drew his sword. One instant, everyone merely found those afterimages incomparably strange. The next, they discovered that he had appeared before Bai Xiang as if by teleportation, already gripping the green blade in both hands and pressing it diagonally against Bai Xiang’s sword.

Bang!

It was like thunder exploding out of flat ground.

Bai Xiang had indeed blocked the strike with Feixiang Heaven, but even so, a deep sword-mark spread out from behind her. No… it would be more accurate to say it blasted outward, cutting through the platform, then through the grounds, and finally cleaving a gash into the main body of the arena itself, its end stretching so far that no one could tell where it stopped.

There is something wrong with that strength!

Daoist Luoying abruptly rose to his feet. A moment later, many of the Void People’s Immortal Venerables also reacted in belated shock.

These afterimages… th-this, this looks like the void-traversing art of body cultivation brought to perfection from the legends, doesn’t it?

In truth, it was not a technique at all. It was simply that the body had become powerful to a certain degree, that its strength had become vast to a certain degree. With strength alone, one could crush the void and rewrite certain laws within it. It was the mark that belonged only to Great Saints of the ancient human race!

Chu Weiping was a Great Saint of body cultivation?

That fact lay far beyond anyone’s imagination. Even Li Huiran, who was also watching through a screen and believed himself to be one of the people in the world who best understood what realm Chu Weiping truly occupied, was equally stunned when he saw this. His brows and eyelids jumped violently of their own accord.

The Great Saints of the human race in the archaic era… back then there had been no Dao-Void Methods, nor any so-called transcendent powers.

But those things, those monsters, had forced their way through by tempering and grinding their own flesh. With nothing but the body, they could cross the void, smash through every disordered phenomenon blocking their path!

Once the body had been cultivated to such a realm, they truly had no need for divine pools or divine abilities. Every move they made was a restructuring of disordered void phenomena, an interference with the laws of Heaven and Earth!

Once they reached that level, they themselves became living Heavenly Dao divine pools!

Quite a few people were genuinely frightened. They instinctively searched their memories for the relevant records, and deep aftershocks of fear began spreading through them. Thank goodness it was Shenming Sword Dao that had crashed head-on into this monster!

But Daoist Luoying’s brows remained knit tight.

No…

Compared with the legends, compared with the phenomena such a realm was said to display, these afterimages were still a bit too pale.

One could only say Chu Weiping had approached that point. His true cultivation was still far from it, and he still had a long road left to study.

Immediately afterward, he turned his wary gaze toward Bai Xiang.

There was no special reason for it.

If Chu Weiping’s sword had struck him by surprise, without any warning at all, Daoist Luoying would not have dared claim he could take it unscathed.

But Bai Xiang had done exactly that.

True, she had also abandoned that calm, cloud-light manner. She had been forced to grip her sword in both hands, with both feet spread slightly into a horse stance. Only with that posture had she blocked the sword force. But the profundity contained in that alone was enough to make onlookers like him feel their scalps go numb.

“She actually… blocked it.”

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At the same time, Chang Hongyuan, watching the scene through the live broadcast, also felt his heart shake violently.

Unlike the others, who were focused on Chu Weiping’s exposed strength, what he cared about was this… this sword had actually forced Bai Xiang to block in that way.

Chang Hongyuan had fought Bai Xiang head-on before. His proudest field-path divine pool, Great Luo Heavenly Abyss, had not only been useless against her, it had instead been smashed apart sword-stroke by sword-stroke in a pure display of force, with no technique involved whatsoever.

So he knew very well just how terrifying a power was hidden beneath that apparently slender, delicate body.

When she faced me back then, I think she used only one hand on the sword the entire time…

Chang Hongyuan narrowed his eyes slightly.

A Bai Venerable Lord like that had been forced by a mere cultivator of the primary world… forced by Chu Weiping, on the very first clash, to grip her sword with both hands?

Auntie!

Bai Zhuqing had only just returned to the formation when she witnessed this scene. She could not help leaning over the railing again, staring into the arena in worried concern.

Shock. Surprise. Aftershocks of fear. Wariness.

Setting aside the countless emotions brewing outside, at this moment Bai Xiang was probably the only one who understood why Chu Weiping possessed such a level of body-refining cultivation.

She had created the new methods of the Path of Qi, and the highest stage it had reached so far was the Origin Realm.

The Origin Realm emphasized body cultivation. It was the stage of excavating the Great Medicine of the Human Body and activating the body’s life potential through the orifices and meridians.

But in essence, it was not aimed solely at body cultivation as a single end in itself. The reason it currently placed such emphasis on body cultivation was that once the Three Flowers were full and mutually connected, every advance made in the body could feed back simultaneously into qi and spirit.

Its principle was not profound at all. In fact, it was fairly simple. The only reason only Bai Xiang could currently do it this way was that only her Three Flowers were complete.

Among the Immortal Venerables, whether Daoist Luoying or Ten-Extremes Daoist, Yang Chen or Chang Hongyuan, perhaps some of them had hidden their gifts from the outside world. Perhaps some had revealed and refined two Origin Orifices at once, filling two among the Three Flowers. But none of them could compare to Bai Xiang.

And body cultivation had long since fallen into decline. Countless predecessors had tried it, and all had used blood-soaked examples to prove that the body’s orifice-meridians simply could not be excavated completely. And if they could not be excavated completely, then dreaming of bringing body cultivation to full completion was just that, a dream.

Because of that, they did not even dare imagine that there could still be someone in the world capable of tempering herself through such a “barbaric” method.

Only Bai Xiang knew it could be done, and only Bai Xiang had truly done it.

So when it came to cultivation insight at the Origin Realm, when it came to body cultivation and the path of gathering the medicine, she felt no false modesty. At the very least, among all the minds currently surfaced into the light, she believed no one surpassed her.

So of course she could understand Chu Weiping.

The Sword Dao Innate!

It, too, was “gathering the medicine,” the stage of transforming toward Sword Lordhood!

People like Wu Mengzi could only remain at that stage for a brief time. After obtaining some benefits, they would be forcibly kicked out of that state of insight and directly advanced into the Sword Lord realm. But Chu Weiping had used the Emotion-Forsaking Dao to cut away all obstacles, showing not even himself the slightest mercy!

He cleaved out a separated corpse and preserved the true self.

This was the trick Qingping’s sword had used. It allowed every Qingping Sword Lord to force the emotion-forsaking true body to remain within the insight of the Innate stage.

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It was just like in ordinary xianxia novels, where one had to undergo a lightning tribulation to ascend into the manifest world, and after passing it, Heaven would show grace and grant the cultivator a chance to comprehend Heaven and Earth.

Others would be kicked out of that state not long after entering it, and even if they ascended, it would be hard for them to ever recreate that state of mind again.

But Chu Weiping could remain in that state indefinitely. He could keep comprehending forever!

Converted into terms of Sword Dao Innate, that meant that for all these years, every single moment, he had been gathering the Great Medicine of the Human Body! Not for even one moment had he stopped!

Even if he did not understand the secret of the Origin Orifices, even if he had taken many wrong turns and detours and perhaps needed a very long time to find new orifices and new medicine, then with so much time piled up, his progress in body cultivation should have been forcibly inflated by sheer accumulation alone!

And on top of that, he had also gained insight into qi methods from Qin Wuyang, which contained the embryonic concept of the Origin Realm. Once he understood that, it was equivalent to sweeping away the mist before his eyes!

What other constraint did he still need to fear?

None!

With a goal and with methods in hand, of course he would advance by a thousand miles a day upon the path of cultivation. Today, he had already reached the threshold of sainthood!

“Heh…”

For the first time in her life, Bai Xiang felt that the power transmitted through Feixiang Heaven could not be endured by the flesh alone. Her gaze shifted away from the two swords pressed together, each trembling minutely against the other, and settled on Chu Weiping’s rigid face.

“No wonder you wanted to stay.”

“You understand it too. After learning my foundational method, it’s hard to say this sword still counts as ‘Sword Dao’…”

Bang!

Chu Weiping’s answer was to exert force all at once, driving Feixiang Heaven downward by sheer pressure.

He could not identify what sort of emotion this was in precise terms.

He only felt that he had to show exactly this kind of stance. He absolutely could not accept such an evaluation!

But in the next instant, even that emotionless face stiffened for a moment. Reality had not unfolded as he expected. Feixiang Heaven had not been knocked aside by the Qingping Sword to buy him room for a follow-up strike. Instead, an immense vibration force surged through the blade, stacking layer upon layer like sea and abyss, then finally turning into a massive tide of force that shook him backward!

Bang!

With that shock, both swords let out sharp sword-cries. All anyone saw was layer after layer of illusory currents erupting from the point where the blades crossed. Every scene, every appearance touched by those currents twisted and shattered. Nothing could withstand them.

Zheng!

With one sword-sweep, Bai Xiang knocked the Qingping Sword aside. Her wrist flicked, and her cloth-shod left foot slid forward in a pressing step. Power traveled up from her lower leg into her thigh, hips, waist, chest, and abdomen, finally pouring into the full arc of her arm, as if her whole body had stretched into a drawn bow. Carrying the force of a mountain-crash, she sent a vertical slash straight forward.

That “technique” was not known to Chu Weiping alone.

The Burning Star secret art was already active.

She could hardly wait. The sharpness in her twin pupils outshone even the sword-light.