Beneath the lonely cliff, several figures in lotus-embroidered robes darted back and forth, rummaging through the lush undergrowth, yet found nothing.
After a long search, one of them suddenly cried, “Come look!”
The others rushed over.
“Any sign of the missing fearless soldiers or Xu Sheng?”
“None. But look here.”
The Lotus Cult disciple pointed at a patch of bare earth. Ground was common at the base of a cliff—damp, smelling of rotted plants and faint mildew—yet something was wrong.
Crusts of blood spotted the soil. Bits of flesh, shredded cloth, and bean-sized splinters of bone lay scattered.
The Lotus Cult disciples, sent to recover the Green Lotus weapons and Xu Sheng’s body, fell silent as a grim thought formed.
“Were they killed...and then chopped to pieces?”
“But this is our own territory. Who would take the trouble to carve up the bodies afterward?”
“True. unless a single blow was so strong the fearless soldiers disintegrated into blood-mist on impact.”
A chill rippled through them. They scanned the gloomy forest as if some unseen monster lurked within.
“Report to the elders. This is beyond us.”
Bzz! Bzz! Bzz! The azure long blade droned in the air like a bee, not the lone insect but an entire swarm.
The buzzing faded, yet a dim, hazy halo clung to the blade—a terrifying, ultra-high-frequency vibration.
An instant later, the tremor ceased.
Li Yuan sheathed the weapon and rested his chin on his hand, pondering his brand-new fifth rank state.
At sixth rank, shadow blood turned into sand; its circulation depended on the seed of intent, which was acquired from a visualization aid.
At fifth rank, the shadow blood was refined further into strands of source blood, with it revolving around a complete ancestral seal.
Ancestral seals and seeds of intent were simply mental constructs that drove the shadow blood. Breaking into sixth rank altered a martial artist’s mindset. By fifth rank, the three seeds fused with the self, birthing a brand new persona.
For most, the ancestral seal was anchored within the heart, producing a supposedly perfect personality like that of Jing Shuixiang. That persona may suppress the original self, which would resurface at fourth rank.
Fortunately, Li Yuan didn’t need to worry about this problem. His ancestral seal hovered outside his heart; it may never be truly complete, yet it was already more complete than anyone else’s.
“Husband, how’s the insight coming?” Yan Yu asked as he paused.
Li Yuan slid the blade onto his back. “Not bad. My strength lies in vibration. The oscillation lets me bypass defenses; the ripple on the edge simply breaks them apart. It doesn’t just shred armor; it disintegrates everything it touches into dust. One slash and the target explodes into a cloud of blood. The clothes disappear with the body.”
That brief field test clarified the nature of his power. Its essence wasn’t ignoring defense at all, but vibration.
In his empowered state, his blade vibrated so quickly it looked motionless, leaving every cut eerily smooth.
After understanding the origin of his ancestral seal, Li Yuan reached for brush and paper to draft a fifth rank martial cultivation manual. He had no intention of handing it to the Lotus Cult; it would be for future disciples of his own.
“The creators of other techniques produced only three-seed ancestral seals. I can tell at least this much after residing in the Holy Tree Temple for so many years. The books and records I read in the Vine Pavilion hint the same elsewhere.
“I produced three seeds too, yet they’re odd. They’re more like catalysts rather than complete seeds. Every martial artist who cultivates my technique ends up sprouting seeds unique to them.
“That means my ancestral seal can absorb endless seeds. Maybe there’s a limit, I can’t see it for now.
Li Yuan bit the end of his brush, thinking.
“So, when my disciples reach fifth rank, will they break the three-seed ceiling and wield four seeds, 10 seeds...maybe more?
“It should work,” Li Yuan decided. “But my disciples won’t be like me.
“My ancestral seal floats outside my heart, so the chaotic wills sealed inside only affect me when I actively call on them.
“Their ancestral seals sit in their hearts. They’ll have to endure that chaos every moment of the day. And if nothing changes, it will drive them mad.”
He rubbed his temples, feeling as though the path of inheritance he had fought so hard to open was about to snap in two.
“This whole martial art is a trap... No one else can practice it without losing their minds!
Li Yuan thought of the chaotic intent within his ancestral seal and an unsettling idea surfaced.
“Could it be because I’m a transmigrator? The visualizations I created originated from poems I knew before crossing over into this world. Did I smuggle in foreign elements that this universe can’t digest, turning the power chaotic? But they’re only poems... How could that cause so much trouble? Or maybe it’s some deeper karmic thread?”
He shook the thought away; speculation was pointless. The result was clear. The technique was lethal to anyone but him.
“I’ll have to pair my martial cultivation technique with a mind-cleansing discipline; stillness of heart should let them wield greater power. But where am I going to find one that complements my martial arts?”
Li Yuan had worked out as much as he could of his fifth rank cultivation manual. Now, he was figuring out a blade skill worthy of it.
He could already imbue his blade with hypersonic vibrations by pressing his ancestral seal into his heart. That was terrifying in its own right, but it still wasn’t enough.
So, Li Yuan decided to fully immerse himself in creating a new blade skill. He mused while walking by day, pondered while holding his wife at night; Yan Yu could sometimes feel the rhythm of his blade in his pulse and could only roll her eyes.
As for the Lotus Cult’s war with the Five Elements Alliance? He stayed away. The chaos there only deepened, the risk climbed, and he had done everything useful short of joining the slaughter himself. Besides, his real purpose in Gemhill County had been to harvest seeds, and he’d already done that. Now, he merely waited for the next crop to ripen.
Those seeds and Li Yuan benefited one another. After he absorbed their ancestral seal, they actually stabilized. Yet once matured, the Lotus Cult would split each seed-bearer in two—memory and desire transformed into an exotic beast and the body refitted into a fearless soldier.
Li Yuan made a silent note. Someday, if he had the chance, he would restore the Bladeseekers to a proper training ground, not the Lotus Cult’s super soldier factory.
Li Yuan wandered ever deeper into the thicket of studying the fifth rank blade. Nothing on the open market could serve him; he would have to invent the skill himself.
The Ruling Blade, steeped with heroic spirit, was slow but possessed tremendous force.
The Phantom Blade, dripping with demonic aura, was lightning-fast yet lacked heft.
The Final Blade, tinged with a hermit’s solitude, could cleave through anything before it, but it burned out quickly.
Righteous, demonic, and carefree... Every path was shredded in the ancestral seal’s chaos until no boundaries remained, as if a baby’s wail were swallowed by the roar of a bazaar.
That very chaos, though, allowed Li Yuan to fuse his three paths, refine them, and climb to a higher plane. Nonetheless, the climb was steep.