Chapter 89: Chapter 89
‘Deduce!’
【Deducible martial art detected: Dark Eagle Stance. Proceed with Deduction?】
‘Yes.’
Shen Xiuhan willed it.
Before his eyes, the pale golden number plummeted like water bursting through a dam.
Thirty…
Twenty-three…
Sixteen…
Nine…
One…
Zero.
BOOM!
In that instant, the courtyard fell into absolute silence.
The rustle of wind through bamboo leaves, the patter of waves against the shore — every sound vanished.
As though…
Some irresistible, immense power had sucked all noise from the world.
Shen Xiuhan’s brow burned.
In his mind, golden light wove and converged, coalescing into a spectral figure whose features could not be discerned.
The phantom planted its feet and assumed the opening form of Dark Eagle Stance.
Then, at a dizzying pace, it began cycling through the stance — driving force, circulating qi-blood — again and again, tirelessly.
【You cultivated Dark Eagle Stance for fifteen years before finally reaching the threshold of Transforming Strength — only to collide with the shackles of the martial path. You entered seclusion for three years. Though flashes of insight occasionally sparked, they slipped through your grasp like reflections in water.】
【In the nineteenth year, you emerged from seclusion and stepped into the vast mortal world. You traveled the breadth of mountains and rivers, witnessed every facet of common life. The road was hard, but amid the dust of the world you came to understand the true meaning of the martial path. The long accumulation bore fruit at last — your qi-blood underwent a thunderous metamorphosis, and your cultivation broke through the Hidden Strength barrier as naturally as water finding its course.】
【In the twenty-second year, you journeyed deep into the Dali Mountains and stood before a thousand-ren cliff face, practicing your stance in solitude. By chance you raised your head and saw, high in the heavens, an eagle and a golden vulture locked in a battle to the death. The black eagle broke a wing and plummeted, trailing blood. The golden vulture shrieked, rending the clouds. Witnessing the raw, primal fury of those colossal raptors in mortal combat, you fell into instant enlightenment.】
【In the twenty-seventh year, you sat atop the cliff for five full years, until every shred of that life-and-death struggle’s essence was carved into your bones. Using Dark Eagle Stance as the furnace, you broke apart the old and forged the new, creating a technique aligned with your own martial truth — an Astral Strength-grade art: Golden Vulture Soaring Wind Art. The moment it took form, your qi-blood swept all before it, and your cultivation leapt directly to Late-stage Hidden Strength!】
【In the thirtieth year, you polished every detail of Golden Vulture Soaring Wind Art to perfection. Then, using the profound stance art as a crucible to refine your combat techniques, you discarded the shallow-rooted Heavenly Dark Eagle Force and created an Astral Strength-grade killing art: Heavenly Vulture Twisting-Wind Hand.】
SWISH!
Consciousness came flooding back like a tidal bore.
Thirty years of painstaking cultivation — and with it the martial truth of a butterfly breaking free from its chrysalis — poured into Shen Xiuhan’s mind, his limbs, his bones, every last fiber of flesh, like wisdom poured from the crown.
In the next instant!
Shen Xiuhan’s eyes snapped open. Deep within his ink-black pupils, a sliver of razor light shot forth.
BOOM!
He hadn’t even consciously triggered it, yet his torrential qi-blood erupted like a horse with the reins torn free, surging through the four fully tempered primary bones in a thundering circuit.
Then, as though finding a release valve, it wheeled as one and flooded downward toward the sinew-vessels of the lower abdomen.
The Sinew Tempering barrier required opening five primary sinews.
They were: the Surge Vessel, the Girdle Vessel, the Conception Vessel, the Governor Vessel, and the Yang Heel Vessel.
The first was the Surge Vessel.
This vessel originated deep in the lower abdomen and spread like a spider’s web through the chest, belly, and limbs, threading the entire body. It was the “Sea of the Twelve Meridians” — also called the Blood Sea.
Once it was opened, a martial artist could mobilize qi-blood throughout the body at will.
No longer would he be left helpless the way Blood Tempering and Bone Tempering fighters were — forced to simply wait for his body to slowly regenerate once his qi-blood ran dry.
With the Surge Vessel open, a single thought would set that Blood Sea pumping qi-blood in a ceaseless torrent, stopping only when the entire vessel had been drained to nothing.
The recovery afterward took longer, true. But in a life-or-death fight, this ability to double or triple one’s endurance was a trump card whose advantages far outweighed the cost.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
The qi-blood inside him drove forward like a battering ram, crashing against the sealed wall of the Surge Vessel again and again without restraint.
After dozens of savage impacts —
BOOM!
The barrier shattered. The sinew-vessel surged to life.
The Surge Vessel — broken through!
Sinew Tempering — achieved!
A current of newly born, exquisitely condensed force emerged from nowhere, permeating every limb and bone.
A ferocious blast of qi swept outward in every direction.
Bamboo leaves on the ground scattered like flung darts. His blue shirt cracked and snapped in the gale.
Shen Xiuhan rode the momentum, sinking his weight, arms sweeping outward — deceptively slow yet blindingly fast.
CRACK-CRACK-CRACK!
Crisp bone-song rang out in an unbroken cascade. Inside him, it was as though a series of drawn bows had all released at once.
His right hand rose, shifted to a claw, and raked the empty air.
Heavenly Vulture Twisting-Wind Hand!
There was no piercing shriek of torn air. Only a deep, oppressive wave of pressure that rolled outward.
Five claw-shaped streaks of white qi lanced forward several feet like blades, then slowly faded.
“Hoo…”
Shen Xiuhan’s eyes blazed with light. He straightened out of his stance, taking in the seismic transformation within. A murmur of wonder escaped him.
“The power of this art is truly overwhelming — far beyond Heavenly Dark Eagle Force.”
“If I’d had Heavenly Vulture Twisting-Wind Hand that day at Linshui Wharf, a mere Qu Bushi…”
“Even with the Sea-Overturning Pearl in his hand, I’d have had his head off inside ten moves.”
Having gauged the leap in his own strength, Shen Xiuhan gained a far clearer sense of his new realm.
Then a thought struck him, and his expression turned somewhat odd.
This Deduction could break apart the old and forge the new — could create entire martial arts from scratch.
But sometimes, the arts it produced weren’t invented out of thin air. They already existed somewhere in the world.
For instance, the last time he Deduced Dark Eagle Stance, he had comprehended Heavenly Dark Eagle Force.
Later, upon entering the inner court, his master had also taught him this very technique.
Clearly, the art had always existed alongside Dark Eagle Stance in the real world.
But the Twenty-Four Paths of Mountain-Collapsing Legs was a different case.
That leg art was the Gao family’s ancestral inheritance.
At the Manifest and Hidden Strength levels it was formidable enough, but against Transforming Strength arts it fell short.
The system-Deduced Thirty-Six Paths of Sky-Collapsing Legs had forcibly added layers of variation and depth, elevating it to a level that could hold its own even among Transforming Strength techniques.
And this time…
Golden Vulture Soaring Wind Art and Heavenly Vulture Twisting-Wind Hand — surely his master wasn’t going to pull those out of a hat as well?
Shen Xiuhan shook his head. He had no clue, and he wasn’t about to go down that rabbit hole.
He picked up the broom from the corner and gave the courtyard a quick sweep, clearing the carpet of shredded bamboo leaves.
Then he walked inside the bamboo house, seized the teapot from the table, and poured several long swallows of cold tea to wet his throat.
He pulled over a bamboo chair and sat down. Reaching behind him, he produced the old bamboo scroll threaded with gold wire and spread it across the table.
The Tongbei Stance.
Ever since he had pried it from beneath that water urn, Shen Xiuhan had studied the scroll at every opportunity over the past month.
Objectively speaking, the combat techniques embedded in this stance art were genuinely excellent. The ingenuity and viciousness of its moves did surpass both the original Heavenly Dark Eagle Force and the Twenty-Four Paths of Mountain-Collapsing Legs.
But only when measured against sub-Transforming Strength arts.
The martial technique bundled with it — the Through-Arm Fist — might not even be more refined than the Deduction-enhanced Thirty-Six Paths of Sky-Collapsing Legs.
Let alone the Heavenly Vulture Twisting-Wind Hand.
“At best, it’s a reasonably sophisticated Transforming Strength art left behind by someone from the past. To me, it’s no better than a chicken rib — too useful to throw away, too tasteless to bother with.”