Questioning Heaven, Desiring the Way - Chapter 32

Just then, the weapon refiner walked swiftly toward Gu Suihan and placed all the random parts that Gu Suihan had ordered on the table with a curious look on his face. “I’ve finished making everything you wanted according to your requests. The measurements are accurate and I didn’t add any runes at all. You can check them over.”

Gu Suihan was fairly surprised since it had only been six hours. He didn’t expect this old man to work so quickly. He nodded slightly and gently touched the parts to feel the iciness they emanated.

Actually, the old man had finished making these parts a long time ago. But he was really curious as to what they could be, so he sat down by himself and tried to put them together in order to figure out what Gu Suihan had designed. He had seen and made weapons that needed to be assembled, but he had never seen a request for such parts before. It was all very strange to him.

“Are you very curious about it?” Gu Suihan looked up at the old man as he shot something out from his hand.

The old man looked a little awkward as he caught the item deftly. It was the jade slip that Gu Suihan had used to blackmail him. He looked up in surprise at Gu Suihan, because he thought that Gu Suihan might find some other excuse to continue blackmailing him. He didn’t expect Gu Suihan to really keep his word.

“I’ve never accepted such a strange request before and this cost quite a bit, so it’s only natural that I’m curious about it,” said the old man after clearing his throat as his hand quietly crushed the jade slip to powder.

“I’ll show you then,” said Gu Suihan with a faint smile. His fingers moved a little and the old man watched with wide eyes as those strange and seemingly random parts started to come together in Gu Suihan’s hands.

The old man was at the Origin Core Stage, so his eyes were sharp enough to catch every movement that Gu Suihan made, regardless of how fast or complicated his moves were.

A few moments later, a very odd-looking saber was assembled. The blade itself was a meter long and had a channel for collecting blood on both sides. The sharp edge was jagged, but the teeth were barely visible. The spine of the blade was straight and flat. The hilt was 30 centimeters long with a long screw-shaped extension at the end. This all looked frightening.

“What’s this for?” The old man was as curious as a child as he pointed at the cross-guard. A vicious-looking creature was wrapped around one end of the blade, creating a division between the blade and the hilt. The thorny and uneven surface gave off an aura of violence.

Gu Suihan smiled without saying anything and continued to admire the weapon in his hand that looked ready to slay the first person it met. His eyes sparkled and he looked like he was reminiscing as he murmured, “Not bad, not bad at all.”

A brief moment later, Gu Suihan gave a pleased nod. His storage ring gleamed and neat rows of Spiritual Stones instantly appeared on the table. “Don’t be angry, we were both at fault here. I had no choice but to threaten you earlier, I hope you understand.”

Gu Suihan gently put the saber back into its scabbard, downed the rest of his cold tea, and left.

“What a strange boy.” The old man snapped out of his daze and looked at the gleaming Spiritual Stones on the table with a faint smile.

When Gu Suihan handed him the strange but extremely detailed blueprint earlier, he realized that Gu Suihan wasn’t a clueless newbie as he had assumed. In fact, Gu Suihan knew way too much. That was how Gu Suihan had managed to trap him earlier.

Then again, this wasn’t really a very serious matter anyway. Once Gu Suihan paid him the agreed number of Spiritual Stones, the old man didn’t feel so aggrieved anymore.

When it came to creating and refining spiritual weapons, magic weapons, or even treasures, refiners had an unwritten rule among them–which was to always leave a back door. All refiners would secretly include some hidden weakness of sorts when fashioning a weapon so that they didn’t end up getting killed by the very thing they made.

Gu Suihan, on the contrary, was actually going to refine the weapon himself. Or rather, he was going to engrave the runes he wanted himself without the help of anybody else so that he would get exactly what he wanted, without someone else including an intentional fault or finding a way to counter his attacks.

But that posed a new problem. Gu Suihan wasn’t even at the Foundation Establishment stage, so there was no way he could start a fire that could create any of those parts with the ores he wanted to use.

He didn’t even have those raw materials on hand, so he had no choice but to resolve this problem by getting someone at the Weapon Refinery Court to make this weapon for him.

It took a large amount of Spiritual Sense to engrave runes onto a spiritual weapon. The Spiritual Sense that someone at the Foundation Establishment stage had could only cover a 30-odd meter radius wasn’t enough to do such a thing.

But Gu Suihan had something else that nobody else knew about. His biggest trump card was Suihan’s Spiritual Sense. Suihan’s Spiritual Sense was actually at the Divine level, which was a Spiritual Sense that only a cultivator at the Nascent Change stage and above could possess.

And of course, the biggest problem of all this was that Gu Suihan lacked money. If he wanted a ready-made weapon, his 5,000 odd Spiritual Stones were nowhere near enough.

After he returned to his residence, he instructed Taohua and Lihua not to disturb him because he was going into seclusion. Then, he walked straight into his meditation room and didn’t come out again.

“Miss, Gu Suihan went to the Weapon Refinery Court just now and told us that he was going into seclusion for several months.” Lihua scribbled these words on a small piece of paper, hid it in a secluded area outside Gu Suihan’s residence, left a small marking, and left.

“He’s gone into seclusion?” Mo Yuluo sat on her bed and stared quietly at the note in her hand.

Xiaomei made a guess, “After that duel with Li Xianlong, his weapon was destroyed and even though Elder Wang gave him a new sword, he sold it quickly after that. I suppose he was afraid that there was something wrong with that weapon. That’s why he went to get a new one from the Weapon Refinery Court. He’s gone into seclusion in order to refine the weapon, I think.”

“No, that doesn’t sound right.” Mo Yuluo’s long eyelashes fluttered as a puzzled look flashed in her eyes. “If that were so, he wouldn’t go into seclusion for months. He would miss the secret realm expedition that’s happening in a few days’ time and he’d miss his chance to take revenge.”

“Or…could he have bought something that’s really difficult to cultivate?” Xiaomei made a face before finding another possibility.

Mo Yuluo gave her a cheeky smile and said, “Xiaomei, why are you being so silly? Why don’t you ask around for the answer? There’s no point in just sitting here and speculating.”

Xiaomei’s eyes lit up and she exclaimed, “You’re so clever, Miss! Why didn’t I think of that? I’ll go find out more right now!” She sprinted out from Mo Yuluo’s room.

“Is he just lucky?” murmured Mo Yuluo to herself as she ran her fingers across the note in her hand.

Less than 15 minutes later, Xiaomei came running back into the room again, panting heavily as she said, “Miss! Miss! Gu Suihan seems to have gotten a custom-made weapon base and didn’t let the weapon refiner carve any runes on it. I think that’s what happened! He’s going to carve runes on the weapon himself! That’s why he needs to go into seclusion for several months. But since he’s not even at the Foundation Establishment stage yet, several months might still be insufficient for his Spiritual Sense to get anywhere.”

Xiaomei plonked herself at the table without caring about her crude posture and poured tea from the teapot directly into her mouth.

The puzzled look in Mo Yuluo’s eyes slowly faded and her rose petal-like lips curled upwards into a faint smile. “He should count himself lucky.”

Xiaomei nodded in agreement when she heard what Mo Yuluo said. This small distraction made her loosen her grip on the teapot, so the tea flowed down her neck and into her deep cleavage before she realized how hot the tea was.

She started shouting in shock and instinctively pulled her top open to look down, exposing a tempting patch of fair skin.

…

“News must have spread by now,” muttered Gu Suihan quietly with a disdainful look on his face.

He played with his new saber for a while before taking it apart again. He placed everything neatly on the floor, sat down in a lotus position, and sent his consciousness into his subconscious. He stared at the myriad of runes before him for a while before slowly undoing the seal.

He initially thought that his damaged soul would slowly recover with time. It was going to take a really, really, long time, which might have made someone else give up in despair, but not him. He didn’t mind. He had all the time in the world.

But after he entered the Seven Kill Sect, he realized that this world was not that simple. The level of power that one could attain in the world of cultivators was way higher than what was available to him when he was on Earth.

An extended period of development had caused the various aspects of this world to become highly distinct and different from Earth’s. The difference between things like the cultivation of magic, the cultivation of the body, the cultivation of weapons, or even the basic things that all cultivators ought to know (like refining pills, refining weapons, and creating formations) were also separated very clearly from one another.

This world seemed to be like a game, systematic and structured. But these cultivators who were supposedly on the road to understanding the Way didn’t seem to realize this at all.

“It’s just like how Earth was when I left. A mysterious pair of hands made it move along,” murmured Gu Suihan as he thought about those numb, ignorant humans on Earth who lived in a daze all their lives, as well as that depraved society that they were a part of.

This world, on the other hand, didn’t see becoming an immortal or a buddha as their end goal of cultivating the Way. It wasn’t to be able to roam the lands as they liked or to explore the skies. It was to reach the Upper World.

What place was the Upper World? He had no idea. The elders who gave the new disciples lessons didn’t seem to have any details either, but that’s where all of them wanted to be.

These were aspects of this world that revealed themselves after he had secretly done research over time. This world was so much like Earth, and it was equally uncanny. The most uncanny part was how it also had a history that seemed to have been formatted.

He had initially thought that the planes created by the rules of this world were meant to imitate what the Way of Heaven used to be. But the little loopholes that revealed themselves along the way overturned his opinion.

What was the Way of Heaven? He didn’t have any answers to that. But he knew that it, or he, was a strict, perfect, and detailed being. This imitation was too underdeveloped in comparison. It was nothing compared to that creepy and mysterious pair of eyes on Earth.

“The Upper World…is that the world of immortals?” Gu Suihan was still very puzzled. “Or is it referring to the pioneers back then?”

All this thinking came to nothing, so he eventually stopped trying to think. He didn’t have enough clues to work with, so speculating wildly like this would only serve to confuse himself.

It was more urgent to settle the other matters at hand.