Chapter 26: Baleful Mist and Eerie Wind, Transform My Longsword
Clearly, pared to the “dynamic method,” the “static method” had its own advantages. If one’s cultivation leaned more toward refining one’s own life and esseher than bat, theatic method was obviously the better choice.
However, since Great martial arts leaoward flid pced emphasis on physical bat skills, they did not revere such approaches. An Jing had rained in them; he only knew of them by hearsay.
As for a method that bined both dynamid static aspects, Yin and Yang in harmony, to achieve a breakthrough into Internal Energy, he had never even heard of that.
“After breaking through with the dynamic method, the body and meridians would be somewhat stronger, but fine trol would be weaker,” the Sword Spirit expined.
“Oher hand, if you break through with the static method, you’d start out with more precise trol and stronger Internal Energy, but the physical body wouldn’t be enhanced as much.”
“Both fws be offset through ter training. If you incorporate both dynamid static, you save that extra time...though it’s quite difficult, and most people ’t ma. But you have innate wisdom, a strong soul, a robust body, and exquisite skills, so I think you try.”
After saying this, the Sword Spirit sounded someuzzled.
“Strange—does the Huaixu no loeach that? In the past, the inner-sect disciples of major sects all began by entering the Dah yin-yang harmony.”
—Very likely, that was because the Hanbei and Xishan regions were remote pces.
That thought fshed through An Jing’s mind. He then followed the Sword Spirit’s instrus:
“First, enter a meditative state of stillness, then in your mental sea, practice martial forms. The instant your mind and body bee one, unleash that strike simultaneously in both your mind and in the real world.”
“When your Innate One Qi shifts from the extreme of stillo the extreme of movement in that moment, you will have the most power and the subtlest trol. That save a lot of polishing time, allowing you tress toward ‘Internal Breath Like Rivers’ as fast as possible.”
“If your foundation is solid enough, and that unleashed strike fully resonates with your true self, you could even directly break into Internal Breath Like Rivers!”
“Vital Energy” was an old term for Internal Energy used in a writings. Obviously, the Sword Spirit was an a sword. Though it generally used modern Huaixu phrasing, o grew serious, it slipped into the nguage of its own era.
“Now, use the Serene Sword Teique. Otherwise, given your innate wisdom, once you fall into a meditative state you’ll just recall shards of your past-life memories.”
So An Jing circuted the Serene Sword Teique.
He visualized the rusted sword, polishing it with his anger aermination.
In the process, just as the Sword Spirit had said, he started remembering maails from his former life—he even recalled where he had once left the air ditioner remote trol. No wonder he hadn’t been able to find it after searg for so long; it was actually pced behind a vase in the martial hall’s training grounds.
Wait… what was an air-ditionie trol?
Shaking his head to clear the fusion, An Jihat memory aside and thhly eillness.
He sank into his mental sea.
Amid a hazy chaos, all light vaurning into total darkness.
In that pitch-bck mental sea, An Jing saath.
A path leading into a dream.
He was supposed to be practig martial arts, training in the sword teiques he knew best.
Ba the Northern Frohe sword had been the on he practiced most. His father hadn’t sidered the sword to be a perfect oaught it to An Jing only because it wouldn’t get in the way of his future studies and attempts at the imperial examinations.
But An Jing himself truly loved the sword.
——Because a sword had two edges, oip, and a single hilt, capable of killing from any dire.
Yet for some reason, although An Jing should not have been wasting time, he set the sword aside.
He seemed to sense a familiar presence.
The youth stepped onto that path.
As he walked, gradually, faces appeared on both sides of it—Zhang Ying, Ye Xiuyuan, Zhan Feng, and many more familiar faces—one by ohey appeared before him and smiled.
An Jing silently regarded them, looking at each fa turn.
He tinued forward.
The sunlight dimmed, the faces disappeared, and he heard cries that sounded both real and dreamlike—screams and sobs born of utter misery and despair.
“Don’t! Help! Mother, save me—!”
Amid the shadows of the trees, a child could be glimpsed, letting out a heart-wreng scream. He struggled, g the uneven floorboards until his fingernails tore off, but was still dragged away by two silent cultists. They disappeared at the far end of the corridor.
An Jing paused. He noticed the calluses on the boy’s hands from archery practice. Some memory echoed in his mind—memories of hunters, of the future, of a hero’s dream.
It dispersed.
He walked onward.
The shadows thied. Even the echoes of the wailing had vanished. An Jing heard no more screams, only a muffled groan and a voice full of anger.
“You actually bit me?”
In the flowing darkness, because of one child’s sileance, he lit into two in a sirike. His ans, flesh, and fat poured out at once, blood flooding half the corridor.
An Jing gazed at that frail figure. He vaguely recalled that small teacher’s tone, hearing the sigh, the unwillingness, and the resigned acceptance. He felt sorrow, but greater sorrow yet existed in the world.
It dispersed.
He tinued onward.
The path became more desote and broken, isoted from the world. An Jing turned back to look, but only darkness remained behind him.
A bck river ed, with scarlet flowers drifting atop it.
In the river’s deepest recesses, a tall child was tied to a chair. He stared in terror at something approag—something ing near his eyes—then darkness, and a scream that no one could hear.
“Why me?! Why is it me?!”
“Am I not good enough? I do the same as you all!”
No. He was too human. He would cry. He would worry about the friends who had left earlier. Someone like that was uhe rest.
He had only wao knoiasted. He had wao drink a cup of brotherhood wio feast o with his rades, carefree. He believed he had found true panions, but the time was wrong, the pce was wrong.
It dispersed.
The river flowed on, and the thick st of blood stru Jing’s face. The pitch-bck blood river tumbled forward; he saw skulls rolling before him—oer another.
They bore no hatred, no bloodshot eyes, only familiar faces whirling past him, then sinking back beh the blood.
An Jing silently met their gaze until those faces too disappeared, being dust in the wind.
A gust of wind arose—keen, eerie murmurs. The mournful wind stirred with a fog of sorrow and hatred.
tless reses, endless regret.
When the riverwaters receded, the riverbed was filled with skeletal remains, the shadows flowing past to reveal a withered old tree with heads hanging like leaves, and flowers blooming there—flowers that were actually blood-soaked hands reag out for rescue.
The road came to an end.
The dream was about to end.
Rain fell.
Blood drehe earth, soaking An Jing’s entire body.
An Jing had a dream.
He dreamed of the deaths and evils that had taken pce around him.
All that he had once overlooked, cast a sideways g, or kept silent about.
Throughout the entire dream, he had remained wordless—until now, when he ughed.
“Thank you.”
He smiled sincerely, blood running down his cheeks. “Thank you for still being willing to appear before me o time and show me all of this.”
“But this isn’t everything.”
“Tell me everything.”
“I want to see more. I want to remember it all.”
“I swear.”
“I…”
“Will never fet!”
g!
A sw out.
The withered tree quaked, and the blood river surged!
Baleful mist, dead trees, eerie wind, and even the waves on the blood river all yered together, as though being tless razor-sharp bdes aimed at An Jing.
“Sword!”
With a thunderous shout, An Jing thrust out his hand, seizing wind and cloud and gathering the baleful mist. Then, the sword’s bde coalesced of its own accord!
Iy, An Jing’s eyes snapped open.
Awakening from the vast dream in his mental sea, he stood. Every bone in his body reso once, and massive billows of white steam rose from the top of his head.
Meanwhile, in his hand, strands of crimson aura seeped out. tered on his empty grip, they gathered into a hazy, illusory Scarlet Death Bde**!
An Jing took oep forward, his clothes whipping in a sudden gust. Water vapor burst in a ring around him, and he paid it no mind as he sshed a sword strike ahead!
A fierce gale howled, his energy f a white rainbow!
A visibly tangible sword qi cut forward, scattering sand and rocks, slig open a fissure in the ground!
His Internal Energy had extended beyond his body, surging like a river…
This was the Internal Breath Like Rivers realm!
(End of Chapter)
*Ceremonial wine ed during the f of a sworn brotherhood.
**血煞之剑, literally "Blood Killing Sword." Although I've re as a bde for it to sound more natural, it is a sword. FYI bdes are a po whereas swords are the end product. Swords sist of a bde, a hilt, a crossguard, and a pommel.
