Volume 3, Chapter 280 – This Stand-In Role, I’m Taking It!

Lu Zhuxin had never thought of herself as someone with a good memory.

She had never been a diligent student, either.

Back in high school, she had been dragged out to stand in the hallway as punishment so many times for falling asleep in class.

It wasn’t that she didn’t want to learn. She was just born fundamentally incompatible with books. The moment she looked at black print on white paper and heard a teacher’s voice rising and falling in explanation, it was like a sleeping spell cast over her, and she would be out before long.

But right now, with both Chi Xiyan and Chi Jingwen watching, Lu Zhuxin had no choice but to steel herself and open the sword manual.

The manual looked old. Its pages had yellowed with age.

The characters on the pages were as free-flowing and unruly as the sword techniques themselves.

Lu Zhuxin strained her eyes, squinting hard, and managed to make out a few large characters at the top: Celestial Maiden Sword Art.

She read further. The dense black text squirmed before her eyes like a page full of tadpoles.

As she read on, Lu Zhuxin felt her brain going rusty, a heaviness descending, drowsiness creeping in.

‘Ding! Change in host’s status detected.’

‘Intelligence -5’

Lu Zhuxin snapped to attention.

What? Looking at this thing actually makes you lose brain cells?

She clapped the sword manual shut.

She bit lightly at the corner of her lip, her face falling. “I’m sorry, Sister. I can’t make sense of it. I really must not be that Sword Dao Sacred Body after all.”

Chi Jingwen stroked his beard, and his shoulders relaxed slightly.

“Never mind, never mind. Even if you’re not some Sword Dao Sacred Body, you are still a daughter of the Chi family.”

Chi Xiyan, on the other hand, kept her brows knitted.

She wouldn’t mistake what she had felt just now. That sword qi had been real.

To naturally generate innate sword qi from within oneself, even if Chi Muxue wasn’t the reincarnation of a Sword Venerable, she should still carry no small amount of talent in the sword path.

Chi Xiyan had studied this manual herself. It was an ordinary beginner’s text, nothing particularly profound about it.

It shouldn’t have been difficult for Chi Muxue at all.

Could it be… because of her age? Or some other reason?

Chi Xiyan’s gaze dropped to the manual in Lu Zhuxin’s hands.

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“Let me see.”

“Sure.”

Lu Zhuxin handed the manual over.

Chi Xiyan flipped it open. The last time she had looked at it, she had just completed drawing qi into her body.

Reading it now felt entirely different from back then.

“Little Xue, when you say you can’t understand it, do you mean you can’t read the characters?” Chi Xiyan said. “The content of this manual is simple enough, but the phrasing is fairly archaic.”

Lu Zhuxin was at a bit of a loss.

This girl still isn’t giving up.

I can’t even get the words to go into my head. What is there to understand?

Please, just let me go. I’m a fox demon. What am I doing trying to be a sword cultivator?

Lu Zhuxin gave a quiet internal sigh. “Sister… I don’t know how to explain it. The moment I look at those characters, my head starts buzzing.”

Chi Xiyan looked down in thought for a moment. “How about this. I’ll run through the forms once for you. See if you can learn it that way.”

Lu Zhuxin’s eye twitched.

What could she say?

The role she was playing was a good little sister who wanted to make things easy for her elder sister. Refusing wasn’t an option.

Still, Lu Zhuxin had already made her plan. No matter how clearly Chi Xiyan demonstrated it, she would say she didn’t understand a thing.

If she showed absolutely no talent for the sword path, Chi Xiyan would conclude that the spirit root test had simply been in error.

The space inside was too small to practice forms, so the three of them moved outside.

Chi Xiyan took up a wooden sword and stood with it in hand.

The moment she gripped the sword, everything about her changed completely.

The warmth and gentleness of before fell away, replaced by a sharp and cutting sword intent.

Sword cultivators excelled above all else at killing. Even with nothing but a wooden sword in hand, they could sever tendons, shatter bones, and cut down demons.

Chi Xiyan stepped forward, her footwork tracing the seven stars, sword moving with her body, sword wind falling like rain.

To make the forms easy for Lu Zhuxin to follow, Chi Xiyan deliberately slowed her movements.

So to Lu Zhuxin’s eyes, it looked less like a martial demonstration and more like a dance.

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Chi Xiyan danced beautifully. As the Heaven-Mandated Female Lead, graced by fate itself, her charm was naturally maxed out.

Lu Zhuxin had been content to simply watch Chi Xiyan’s sword dance in quiet appreciation.

But a distorted electronic tone suddenly cut into her mind, jarring and out of place.

‘Bzzt… Heaven-Mandated Female Lead detected… transmitting skill…’

‘Current… learning progress… twenty-five.’

On the surface, Lu Zhuxin calmly watched Chi Xiyan’s sword dance. Inside, a storm was brewing.

She, an Eighth Realm fox demon, was actually learning from a sword manual?!

While Lu Zhuxin stood there in stunned silence, that crackling electronic voice kept broadcasting its progress.

‘Learning progress… fifty-six…’

‘Learning progress… eighty-seven…’

‘Learning progress… one hundred…’

The moment learning progress hit one hundred percent, Chi Xiyan also happened to stop her sword dance.

She turned around, looking at Lu Zhuxin with barely concealed anxiety. “Little Xue’er, did you follow it?”

Lu Zhuxin stared blankly at Chi Xiyan, saying nothing. Her attention had been pulled entirely into what was happening in her mind.

‘Bzzt… host has learned skill… Celestial Maiden Sword Art, Basic (Common Grade)’

‘Bzzt… host detected to possess Natal Sword (Supreme Sacred grade)… partner sword cultivator skill unlocked… conditions met, initiating sword path skill system for host…’

‘Bzzt… consume Fortune Points to patch skill deficiencies and upgrade Celestial Maiden Sword Art, Basic (Common Grade) to Celestial Maiden Sword Art, Basic (Yellow Grade)?’

“No…”

Lu Zhuxin let out a quiet breath and turned her attention to the skill panel in her field of view.

Though the text on screen was riddled with garbled characters, she could still make out enough to piece things together.

The skill list before her was divided into two categories. The first was skills she herself had mastered, including the Celestial Maiden Sword Art she had just learned.

The second category was partner skills.

Lu Zhuxin swallowed and mentally selected the partner skills category.

Two lists appeared.

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‘Song Shiyuan (Fifth Realm)’

‘Qu @#$a!3(( (Supreme Sacred Realm)’

The difference was that Song Shiyuan’s entry was lit up, while Qu Qingtang’s was dimmed and grayed out.

Under Song Shiyuan’s entry was a series of Lingxiao Sword Sect techniques and sword arts. Each skill had a cultivation stage listed beside it, ranging from Foundation Establishment to Deity Transformation.

Using any of these skills, however, would require spending Fortune Points.

Lu Zhuxin stared at what was before her and turned it over in her mind.

‘I see. As long as I spend Fortune Points, I can use the skills of any Female Lead I’ve completed a conquest with.’

‘But why does Qu Qingtang’s name appear here?’

‘Does Qu Qingtang count as a completed Female Lead conquest? When did I ever conquer her?’

‘And if she does count, why is her entry grayed out?’

‘Is it because she’s already dead?’

Lu Zhuxin couldn’t figure it out.

But when she looked back at the skill she had just learned, all it took was a single thought and the forms of the Celestial Maiden Sword Art surfaced clearly in her mind.

She raised her hand, using her finger as a sword, and slowly began to trace through the movements along the path that felt most natural.

At first, she was a little unsteady. She had never practiced any sword art before, and she had no foundation in the discipline at all.

But gradually she grew accustomed to the motions, and the forms began to flow with increasing ease.

Before long, she had run through every form she had just learned, without a single stumble.

Lu Zhuxin felt a warmth rising in her chest.

She really could learn these sword arts without the slightest effort.

The condition was that the skills had to be transmitted to her directly by a Heaven-Mandated Female Lead.

It was a significant restriction, but it was more than enough for her to work with.

Before, Lu Zhuxin had been racking her brain over how to undo the marriage between Chi Xiyan and the Song family, especially with Lingxiao Sword Sect backing the union.

That was no easy thing to manage.

Especially when Lu Zhuxin herself was someone with the combat power of a wet paper bag. She wasn’t Ming Zhaoxi. If her identity was exposed in human territory, she did not have the ability to walk away unscathed from a siege of human powerhouses.

But now, it was different.

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Lu Zhuxin had found a crack in the wall. A chance to break this situation wide open.

A plan was slowly taking shape in her mind. If it succeeded, she could destroy this marriage arrangement entirely.

Of course, the prerequisite for any of this was fully establishing the Sword Dao Sacred Body identity in front of Chi Xiyan.

Ha.

Qu Qingtang, oh Qu Qingtang. What’s wrong with playing your stand-in for a while?

If you really are still alive, then in the end, who is whose stand-in might not be so settled after all.

With her decision made, Lu Zhuxin looked back at Chi Xiyan.

Her face wore an expression of timid, helpless confusion.

“Sister… the sword forms I just practiced… did I do them properly?”

At that moment, both Chi Jingwen and Chi Xiyan had undisguised shock written plainly in their eyes.

Yes, the manual was an exceedingly ordinary beginner’s text.

But even Chi Xiyan herself had needed a full day to completely master it.

And yet the girl in front of them had only watched Chi Xiyan practice it once and could already reproduce the entire sequence without a single mistake.

The Innate Supreme Sword Dao Sacred Body. It was terrifying beyond words.

Chi Xiyan pressed down the shock in her eyes, and her gaze once again became difficult to read.

“Little Xue’er, your talent is extraordinary,” Chi Xiyan said with a bitter smile. “So extraordinary it inspires envy. And fear.”

Chi Jingwen also looked at Lu Zhuxin with an unreadable expression. “The Sword Dao Sacred Body. The Sword Venerable Reincarnate… could it truly exist?”

Much as he wanted to dismiss what had just happened, the image of it remained vivid and clear in his mind.

Chi Jingwen couldn’t work out whether all of this was coincidence or something else entirely.

“Sister.” Lu Zhuxin said with artless confusion. “I don’t know whether I’m this Sword Dao Sacred Body or not…”

“The manual you gave me earlier, I couldn’t make heads or tails of it. Those black characters made my head spin and my eyes blur.”

“But the forms you practiced were so easy to follow. I watched once and had them memorized.”

“So really, it’s not me who’s impressive. It’s the sister who taught me the sword art.”