The night was thick with darkness.
The moon shone alone in the sky, not a single star beside her.
A young sword cultivator sat cross-legged; the trees were still, the wind hushed. Out in the wilderness, some godly being had crossed the stream, crossed the narrow path, and was closing in fast.
A fleeing figure crashed through flying branches and blades of grass, vanishing into the clotted night.
The air was taut with killing intent.
Suddenly, a lithe, agile silhouette split through the blackness, pausing atop the treetops like a nimble nightingale.
Xuan Zhao seized Xue Cuo. “They’ve caught up. Run!”
Xue Cuo activated the Ultimate Freedom Art, leaping dozens of zhang in the blink of an eye. Moments later, he swooped back and crouched on a branch. “Wait a bit longer.”
Xuan Zhao stared at him as though he’d gone mad. “Wait for what? Pursuers at our heels. Are you bent on dying?!”
An ambush?
Xuan Zhao looked utterly baffled. He followed Xue Cuo’s gaze and saw only a lone young swordsman in a small pavilion by the South Sea. An ambush?
He lifted his head, ready to ask, but froze. The usually irreverent youth had a faraway look in his eyes, thoughts churning beneath a blank expression.
Xuan Zhao sucked in a breath. Was this someone from the lad’s past?
Hadn’t he claimed he was a stray with neither kin nor ties? Since when did he have a gege?
…
Gu Ruhui had traded a sword to the Turtle Minister of the Dragon Palace in exchange for a divination to ask after one person. After dawdling half the day, the Minister had finally given him this location.
So Gu Ruhui waited quietly here.
If the person didn’t show, the sword cultivator’s plan was simple: go back and cleave that turtle in half.
The sea lay still.
The young sword cultivator sat upon the ground, his pale knuckles like carved jade as he lightly tapped the cold, gleaming edge of his sword.
Its cry rang out like a spring.
An eagle spiralled down, landing and shifting into a handsome man. His brows were blade-sharp, his eyes bright; his rugged, heroic features were softened by two small dimples. While the swordsman was cold and aloof, he brimmed with fiery, upright enthusiasm. Bathed in moonlight, facing that solitary, slender, distant figure, he followed the rhythm of the sword and danced his way through the night.
“Over there!”
“Seize the criminal!”
A blue butterfly beat its wings and darted into the night sky.
Xue Cuo leapt from the branch, sleeves billowing, his high-tied black hair flicking in a neat arc. Xuan Zhao bellowed, “I told you to run and you wouldn’t! Now they’re on our heels! Better we split ways. Your broad road, my narrow bridge! Give me a drop of blood and I’ll repay you through the ages!”
Xue Cuo threw thirty-two talismans with a grunt. “Master Xuan, go on ahead.”
Xuan Zhao had partly fused with the earth spirit and was already dozens of zhang away. As he ran, he muttered guiltily, “That brat’s going to fall here. My body’s long gone; only my soul remains. These temple guardians counter me by nature. Best to part ways while we still can.”
He slipped off quickly, but a sudden roar made his mind go white. He turned to see Xue Cuo raising a tortoise shell to block a temple guardian’s blow.
“What a treasure!”
“A mere Xianghuo evil cultivator dares use such a fine thing? Hand it over!”
Xue Cuo’s strike missed, forcing him back ten paces, and he hurled the shell at the deity. Xuan Zhao’s eyes flashed; he swatted the projectile away, shot back like an arrow, and threw himself before Xue Cuo, grabbing his shell.
Xue Cuo was moved by his refusal to abandon him. Delighted, he said, “Master Xuan, what loyalty! Now that you’ve got an incarnation, you can move freely. Take the shell and escape. I’ll hold them off.”
Xuan Zhao flushed beet-red and stammered, “I-I’m not that sort of dishonourable divine tortoise.”
A clear, ringing sword note sliced through the air.
Behind them, temple guardians rushed in from every direction, weaving a heavenly net to subdue this rogue god who had provoked the South Lord’s temple.
“Trap and kill him with the artefacts!”
“Mind his talismans. Don’t fall for his foul arts!”
Xue Cuo glanced at the relentless gods and suddenly darted in the opposite direction.
“He’s escaping! After him!”
A vast golden net descended over the sea. Xue Cuo brushed it and agony seared through him; he nearly fell from the treetops. A talisman flicked to his fingertips, two fingers poised: “Ignite!”
Brilliant light burst forth, drowning the night. Yet when it died, the net remained unscathed, tightening further.
Trouble, Xue Cuo thought. Battling as he retreated, smothered by the web in the sky, he was driven lower and lower… straight towards the little pavilion.
“Sir, there’s an innocent cultivator here! He’ll be burnt to ash!”
“Leave him. Catch the criminal!”
“What if we kill him by mistake?”
“What of it? A mere itinerant. Wrong place, wrong time. Serves him right to die.”
The temple guardians, wielding long halberds, moved with thunderous force. Forty-two divine figures surrounded them. Xue Cuo fought desperately, blood surging; the only place left to stand was before that small pavilion.
He dodged a magical strike, leapt lightly, and landed like drifting snow.
Inside the pavilion, the sound of swordplay halted.
Xue Cuo stood with his back to it, eyes calm as autumn water. Yet his mouth felt parched and his heart hammered away.
Xuan Zhao was still howling, “We’re finished! Xue Cuo, get in my shell. Three days and three nights, we’ll hold!”
“Xue Cuo!”
“Cuo-cuo!”
“Cuo?!”
He no longer knew what he was shouting. Panic and frustration had stripped him to his cowardly core. After all, he’d been dead seven thousand years; half his power was tied up in the shell he feared losing. The righteous gods of heaven and earth terrified him most.
As for the two cultivators in the pavilion, Xuan Zhao dismissed them entirely, assuming they were simply unlucky bystanders.
Gu Ruhui rose.
He sheathed his sword with a crisp, ringing click.
The eagle stilled, gazing at his master’s retreating figure. Spare and solitary, eyes cold as frost. The back of a pure swordsman.
Perhaps, once in a monster’s lifetime, there is a person they will never forget. There was something wild about them, something distant, a little like stars and cloud, a little like rain and snow over a barren plain.
Gu Ruhui murmured something. The eagle didn’t hear. But he saw the youth in blue stiffen slightly… and turn.
Moonlight come alive. A pearl blazing with quiet splendour.
If this was the person Gu Ruhui had sought all along, then the eagle thought that traded sword was no loss.
“Little shixiong.”
Xue Cuo’s back went rigid. He turned slowly.
Before him stood a cold, strikingly handsome swordsman, his gaze slicing through the murk…. clear to the point of austerity, still to the point of severity.
Yet Xue Cuo knew him at once: the sword-sharp aura, the ancient, unchanging eyes.
Twelve years had passed since immortals and mortals were separated.
The child of six had grown into a tall, elegant young man, already upon the immortal path.
The eyes were the same… only the laughter was gone.
Little shixiong had grown up. He was now taller.
The bitterest partings of the human world.
But none of it mattered now; Gu Ruhui had found him.
He said nothing. He simply walked past Xue Cuo and stopped before him. The sight of the temple gods ahead made Gu Ruhui relive that nightmare from years ago:
Immortal clouds stretching endlessly; his little shixiong standing before him as his spiritual platform was shattered, his immortal roots cleaved, cast down to the mortal realm, his kinship ties gone to dust.
Xuan Zhao jabbed Xue Cuo in the calf. “Xue Cuo, do you know this fellow?”
Xue Cuo muttered gloomily, “He’s my shidi-gege.”
“Did you not claim you were heaven-born, earth-raised, with no kith or kin?”
Xue Cuo replied with sympathy, “I was lying to simpletons.”
Xuan Zhao: “…”
He was momentarily stunned by Xue Cuo’s shamelessness. Then he spluttered, “Then why in the heavens did you drag temple gods here to get him killed? Isn’t he your beloved family, your brother-in-arms?”
Xue Cuo sighed wearily. “I’d love to leave, but look around. This place is sealed tighter than a turtle’s backside. Where am I supposed to run?”
Xuan Zhao’s rage boiled over; his expression turned corpse-like. Wiping his face, he groaned, “Don’t let him go forward, or we’re all done for. Quickly, into my shell. If we live a few more days, that’s still a few more days.”
Before Xue Cuo could answer, a crisp metallic hum rang out.
Above, thunderclouds gathered, roiling as if to form a full tribulation cloud, coiling above the young swordsman’s head. Xuan Zhao looked up and nearly jumped. “Heavenly Spiritual Thunder Tribulation? How old did you say your shixiong is?!”
Xue Cuo considered it. “Around twenty-one, twenty-two?”
Xuan Zhao: “…” That sounds completely absurd.
Seeing how worried he looked, Xue Cuo tried to comfort him, perfectly sincere: “Don’t fret. This sort of tribulation isn’t very long, and you can suppress it by yourself. It’s quite easy to endure.”
Xuan Zhao’s voice cracked in sheer trauma as he remembered his own shell being blasted to fragments during his tribulation. He clenched his heart. “Easy? And what about your realm then?”
Xue Cuo thought for a moment and offered an approximate comparison. “My cultivation method’s different. If we’re matching it to yours… somewhere around Spirit Void, give or take.”
Xuan Zhao was speechless.
The temple gods, long halberds in hand and incense clouds blazing, barked:
“Immortal officials carrying out their duty. Mortals, stand aside!”
“Any who refuse, be slain!”
“Slay!”
“No more prattle! Seize the criminal at once and drag him back to the temple for trial!”
A heavenly net sealed the sky, forty-two righteous gods.
The force of their Dao resonance alone could make ordinary cultivators bleed from their orifices.
They did not deign to explain. They did not spare a glance for this “mortal”. Raised artefacts, tightening celestial nets… each a monstrous threat.
But Gu Ruhui remained at ease, unmoving as a mountain.
The bamboo sword slid from its sheath. It was clear as autumn water, cold as a blade of ice.
Xuan Zhao covered his face. “We’re finished.”
As his words fell.
A clear breeze brushed across the pavilion. Heaven and earth seemed to fall silent.
Xuan Zhao twitched an ear, opened his eyes, and his jaw slackened.
Sword marks lingered in the air.
That single strike had cleaved the heavenly net clean through, scattering the righteous gods like startled birds. The overflow of sword intent swept out in a violent blizzard, its icy killing will tearing down every barrier in its path.
Sword intent.
Pressing forward with an indomitable will
Yet the small seaside pavilion at the centre remained eerily calm… like the eye of a storm.
Xuan Zhao’s face drained of colour. “Who is he?!”
Xue Cuo paused, then said, “The number one swordmaster of Eastern Lands is his shifu.”
Xuan Zhao gaped. “What? Then you must be a disciple of Eastern Lands’ First Sword as well? I’ve never seen you wield a sword!”
Xue Cuo replied evenly, “I’m not.”
Xuan Zhao sniffed. “Didn’t think so.”
“I’ve also… never seen him use this technique before.”
A sudden voice cut in. Only then did Xue Cuo notice the tall demon crouched in the pavilion. It was a great eagle. His gaze blazed, full of fierce yearning, bitter emotion, and a hatred that burned like blood-fire. “If I master that strike, I can avenge my clan.”
“A demon using that move,” Xue Cuo remarked mildly, “would have their bones and tendons torn apart.”
The eagle turned towards the blue-robed youth, ready to ask why. Then his eyes landed on the peacock feather at Xue Cuo’s waist. He froze, eyes bulging, arms loosening. “The Peacock King’s Feather.”
Xue Cuo glanced down. “…” Ah. That would be a feather from Xiao Yun’s leg.
A breeze drifted through.
A warm hand settled on Xue Cuo’s shoulder. He turned. Gu Ruhui’s expression was calm, yet his eyes held a softness… warmth, and aching tenderness.
“Little shixiong,” he said quietly, “come home with me.”
Behind them, Xuan Zhao clasped his hands behind his back, staring in horror as the temple gods fell from the sky like dumplings dropped from heaven.
Human sword cultivators are truly terrifying.
