Chapter 137: Eye of the Void
Pupil arts… Song Yan recalled in his mind that the first time he had encountered a pupil art in the cultivation world was outside the Lingsource Marsh Night Market.
According to Qin Xijun, that night-watch senior disciple who called himself “Chen Seven” had cultivated a special pupil art.
His heart stirred with excitement.
In the cultivation world, when one used divine sense to probe and scan for information, there would always be some traces left behind.
For instance, when probing another cultivator’s cultivation realm, it was very easy for the other party to detect it.
But in Song Yan’s view, a pupil art was a means that could grant knowledge without the need for divine sense scanning.
The Sword Planting Technique recorded that the Void-Viewing Sword Eye was divided into several stages.
What he could cultivate at this moment was naturally the simplest and lowest tier.
During the activation of the pupil art, one could clearly perceive the flow of spiritual energy in one’s surroundings and see through the most basic illusions.
It did not sound particularly powerful, but Song Yan was already content.
He was still in Changping, with no good conditions to cultivate the Soaring Cloud Movement Technique. The various sword techniques in the Compendium of Sword Arts were similarly out of reach.
This sword-path pupil art, however, could be attempted right away.
But he was in no hurry to begin cultivating it.
Instead, he turned his gaze to a Cosmos Bag beside him.
This Cosmos Bag looked identical to the one obtained from Wang Xi during the trip to the Silent Valley.
It was the Cosmos Bag of Shen Huai of the Xuan Yuan Sect.
Within the Infernal Purgatory, to ensure this person could not use any secret techniques to cheat death and prolong life, Song Yan had beheaded him with a single sword stroke, taking all the spiritual items from his body.
For the sake of these possessions of Shen Huai, Shen Yu and Xu Ziqing had later argued over them, but the matter ultimately came to nothing.
These things naturally became his own.
He channeled spiritual energy, erasing the spiritual imprint upon it, and sent his divine sense inside.
The Cosmos Bag contained quite a lot of items.
After roughly sorting through them, he set aside the useless miscellaneous objects and clothing.
Shen Huai’s wealth was considerable. The low-grade spirit stones left in his possession alone numbered over six hundred.
To his surprise, among them was also a single cyan middle-grade spirit stone.
Low-grade spirit stones contained mixed spiritual energy and generally had no distinction of attribute.
However, once one reached middle-grade spirit stones, the spiritual energy within them began to show qualitative differences in attribute.
In the earlier battle at Peach Blossom Wharf, among the items Qin Ying had let them choose from, one had been a middle-grade spirit stone.
Its color and texture were very similar to this one Shen Huai possessed.
Song Yan held it in his hand and carefully felt it. The wood-attribute spiritual energy within appeared to be the most dominant and the purest.
Middle-grade spirit stones still contained spiritual energy of many other attributes.
But compared to low-grade spirit stones, they already had one particularly prominent attribute that stood out clearly.
The spirit stones Song Yan, Rong, and Wu had obtained from slaying the talisman puppets within the painted world had a faint purple hue.
Therefore, the lightning-attribute spiritual energy within them was the most prominent.
If a cultivation technique of a corresponding attribute could be supplemented by middle-grade spirit stones during practice, the speed should be doubled with half the effort.
Song Yan stored away all the spirit stones.
He then looked at the other items.
One of them was that dharma artifact made of several linked copper coins.
Unfortunately, this copper coin artifact had first been broken by the ghost shadows within the Infernal Purgatory, and before it could be repaired and resupplied with spiritual energy, Shen Huai had taken it out again in an attempt to block that trace of sword-dao true essence.
Now it was shattered beyond repair and completely unusable.
If he spent effort and spirit stones to find someone to repair it, the cost would outweigh the benefit. There was no need.
Next was the jade pendant.
He picked it up and examined it carefully for a while, but did not find anything particularly special about it.
The first time Song Yan had killed Shen Huai, this jade pendant had emitted some emerald spiritual light, seemingly restoring her vitality.
That was why he had beheaded Shen Huai again, out of concern for this item.
No longer hesitating, he channeled both spiritual energy and divine sense into it, erasing the residual imprint.
In a short while, the refinement was complete.
This was a middle-grade dharma artifact with no offensive capabilities. It could automatically use the green wood spiritual energy stored within to heal a cultivator’s injuries during combat. However, it now seemed that his earlier decision to behead the opponent for safety’s sake had actually been unnecessary.
Because this jade pendant artifact could only mend some external wounds and reverse injuries within the meridians.
A fatal wound like the one Shen Huai had sustained was beyond its healing capacity.
Last was the hairpin.
This hairpin was agile and cunning, classifiable as a “needle” type dharma artifact. It was precisely the very thing that had nearly cost him his life that day.
However, Song Yan had no interest in needle-type artifacts.
He put it back into the Cosmos Bag. When he returned to the sect, he would find a place to sell it for spirit stones.
Beyond these items, the bag contained quite a few useful things such as talismans and pills, which Song Yan transferred one by one into his own Cosmos Bag.
After tidying things up, he picked up a jade slip.
This was something found in Shen Huai’s Cosmos Bag. It appeared to be a secret technique for Observing Spiritual Veins and Gazing at Qi.
This secret technique seemed to have no name when Shen Huai obtained it. What the jade slip called “Observing Spiritual Veins and Gazing at Qi”—
As it happened, the Void-Viewing Sword Eye he had found in the Sword Planting Technique today also possessed similar functions.
But clearly, each had its own strengths.
The Void-Viewing Sword Eye pierced through illusion and reality, allowing one to observe the flow of spiritual energy during combat and seize upon an opponent’s openings.
It leaned more toward combat and killing.
Shen Huai’s secret technique, on the other hand, leaned more toward tracing origins and tracking.
It allowed one to discern clues from a cultivator’s every action and deduce which techniques and secret arts that person cultivated.
It could even speculate on which unused spiritual talismans or dharma artifacts a person might be concealing.
However, the cultivation of this secret technique was extremely complicated. One had to be thoroughly familiar with the attributes and characteristics of all manner of spiritual items.
The effort and time required were simply too great.
After much deliberation, Song Yan set it aside for the time being.
Though he had no intention of selling it either, he would not consider cultivating it in the near term.
The insights gained within the Infernal Purgatory had led him to decide to place greater emphasis on sword-path related cultivation.
To keep things as pure as possible, so that he could travel further on the path of the sword in the future.
Having organized everything methodically, he finally began to cultivate the pupil art.
He calmed his mind, focused his spirit, and guarded the One.
Song Yan sat cross-legged upon the green stone floor, closing his eyes and concentrating, slowly adjusting his breathing.
After a moment, he pressed his fingers together before his chest.
Spiritual light glimmered at his fingertips.
Within the Heaven-Suppressing Sword Palace, the sword qi cycling around his natal flying sword now flowed forth from his fingertips like silk spun by a spring silkworm.
Guided by a trace of spiritual energy, it climbed toward the center of his brow.
The first wisp of sword qi seeped into the Jingming acupoint.
“Hss—”
His eyelashes trembled violently as a piercing pain like needles striking spread from both eyes.
He hurriedly stabilized his mind, enduring the intense pain, and slowly dissipated some of the sword qi.
“I circulated too quickly. I nearly harmed my eyes.”
A wave of lingering fear rose in his heart.
The secret technique had recorded that when cultivating the Void-Viewing Sword Eye for the first time, one must circulate the qi slowly and must not be hasty.
Song Yan’s circulation had already been extremely gentle and careful, yet it was still too fast.
“Phew—”
He steadied his technique and exhaled softly.
“The sword emerges from the void abyss, the eyes like hanging pearls…”
He silently recited the technique’s key formula, continuing to guide the sword qi gathered at his brow slowly toward both eyes.
(End of chapter)