Chapter 15: Sword Sect

April fourteenth. Five days remained until the night market at Spirit Source Marsh, as agreed upon with Granny Qin.

Within his cave dwelling, Song Yan sat cross-legged with his eyes closed.

At this moment, his divine sense was undergoing a tremendous transformation.

In a vast expanse of darkness, over a dozen streaks of light slowly arranged and combined, forming a pattern resembling a small chessboard.

That chessboard-like phantom suddenly shifted once more.

As if placed upon an ancient battlefield, soldiers and enemy generals slaughtered each other in bloody combat.

As if seated deep in the clouds, an immortal recluse indulged between mountains and waters.

As if beneath a silent night sky, a child gazed up at a sky full of stars.

“The lord of the generating numbers, holding to the extreme and directing the four directions…”

“Borrowing the balance of heaven and earth, using mountains, rivers, and vegetation as pieces, combining the five elemental arts as terrain, tracing the five stellar meridians as momentum, with the human seated at the celestial origin…”

“This is… Five Star Meridian Capture.”

In that instant, he felt his divine sense being torn into dozens or even hundreds of tiny fragments. Intense pain instantly flooded his other senses, and his mind erupted with a deafening roar.

He did not know how much time had passed before the roaring gradually subsided.

Within the cave dwelling, Song Yan slowly opened his eyes.

“Does this count… as a breakthrough?”

This mental cultivation technique called “Five Star Meridian Capture” contained only methods for cultivation and visualization, without a complete system.

So he was unclear about what level his divine sense had reached.

Song Yan extended his divine sense, which could reach approximately twenty-four or twenty-five zhang. Even the scenery outside the cave dwelling was fully visible to him.

Falling leaves, insect cries, morning dew—every movement was amplified many times in his eyes and ears, giving him a faint sense of…

Control.

“This is the effect of enhanced divine sense. Truly wondrous.”

When he first learned this technique, Song Yan’s divine sense had progressed rapidly. In just a few short days, he had advanced from three or four steles to the level where he could slash twelve steles.

But after returning to the sect, he quickly discovered that the speed of his divine sense cultivation grew slower and slower…

In over a month’s time, he had only advanced from twelve steles to fourteen…

He had cultivated diligently until today, when his divine sense finally underwent a strange transformation—he had likely broken through some minor bottleneck.

After adjusting his breathing for a moment, Song Yan took out the stone bead. It had now returned to white. He sank his divine sense into it and once again arrived at the Two Polarities Realm.

He turned slightly to look at the seventeen ink-dot rings on that stone stele, then raised his gaze to the massive ink stele condensing in the sky.

His divine sense transformed into a blade, easily slashing through the first stele.

Song Yan could now divert his mental focus to carefully savor the sensation of divine sense becoming a blade…

Wondrous.

Every time he shattered an ink stele, one of the ink-dot rings lit up.

By the time the seventeenth ink stele condensed, Song Yan’s divine sense already showed signs of exhaustion. Yet with a full-force surge, he still formed a blade to meet the plummeting giant stele.

Boom…

…

Finally, with all seventeen ink steles shattered, all seventeen ink-dot rings were fully illuminated!

Song Yan could barely hold on, yet he still refused to leave the Two Extre Realm, staring fixedly at the ground where the stone stele inscribed with the Five Star Meridian Capture technique rested.

But what changed first was not that stone stele—it was the sky.

Song Yan looked up in the direction of the sound. The shattered black “ink marks” were slowly drifting and combining, seemingly forming some kind of pattern.

“Hummm—”

Song Yan focused his gaze. He saw that the divine sense from the seventeen shattered ink steles had not dissipated.

At this moment, they hummed in unison, gradually gathering and combining into two ancient yet sharply radiant characters…

At the same time, the stone stele inscribed with the Five Star Meridian Capture technique finally showed signs of change.

The text and diagrams on it dissipated like ink into water, and those two characters gradually took shape, imprinting upon its surface.

Song Yan raised his eyes to look. In the distant sky, black and white hues outlined a magnificent, colossal phantom of an immortal gate!

“Sword Sect…”

Song Yan murmured.

He was no longer completely ignorant these days. He understood some basic knowledge. In the cultivation world, there were actually quite many sects named something-sword sect. Even in their State of Chu, there were several minor, insignificant sects—things like “Clear Source Sword Sect” or “Spirit Rhinoceros Sword Sect.”

Most cultivators within those sects focused on sword techniques or specialized in refining flying swords.

But to name a sect directly with just “Sword Sect”—wasn’t that a bit arrogant…

Just as Song Yan was lost in thought, the phantom landscape of the sect dissipated like ink entering water.

Ink-black symbols, scriptures, and diagrams emerged from that darkness, circling around Song Yan.

In that instant, the first ink-black rune shot straight toward him, drilling into the space between his eyebrows.

Song Yan instinctively retreated several steps, but in this space he was only a wisp of divine sense, unable to match the speed of the ink-black runes.

Then, all the ink-black runes rushed toward the space between his eyebrows, vanishing inside without a trace.

His divine sense was already strained from consecutively releasing seventeen blade strikes. Now, with the ink-black runes flooding into his mind…

Song Yan felt a piercing pain and lost consciousness.

…

Four days later, at dawn.

The rising sun cast its radiance from the east, purple qi filling the air. Most disciples who were not too lazy would rise early to cultivate slowly, inhaling the purple qi.

Song Yan had not found any in the Qi Condensation chapters about how this morning purple qi differed from ordinary spiritual qi, nor was he quite clear about its wondrous properties.

But inhaling the morning sun’s qi seemed to be a tradition throughout the entire Dongyuan Sect.

According to Senior Brother Lin Qing, this tradition had been passed down since Daoist Master Li Jun first came here to establish the sect.

Outer Disciple, Eastern Mountain Sun-Gazing Rock. Song Yan sat in a secluded corner, slowly opening his eyes.

“To formally cultivate this ‘Sword Planting Art,’ one must actually discard one’s cultivation and start over…”

“…”

“This couldn’t be some demonic cultivation method, could it?”

Song Yan muttered to himself.

Thinking back on that day, he was filled with suspicion about this strange sect.

“Sword Sect…”

When he had lost consciousness in the Two Polarities Realm, it took a full three days before he finally came to.

In his mind appeared something like a letter of instructions and a special cultivation technique.

The contents of that letter contained many words Song Yan did not understand, or was vague and unable to determine the meaning of.

So he could only interpret it according to his own understanding.

From his personal understanding, this sect was called the Sword Sect, a sect that exclusively cultivated the Dao of the sword.

But the sect’s disciples had met with sudden disaster, all of them dead and their dao destroyed.

The letter’s author, as sect master, could not swallow his anger, so he went to settle accounts.

But the sect had been passed down from the founding ancestor. With only four or five generations before him, the lineage was cut off. The sect master felt ashamed before all the ancestors.

Therefore, he gifted the Sword Sect’s token to a fated person, so that when the successive ancestors held him accountable, there would at least be an explanation.

However, since the Sword Sect had been destroyed, with no guide to test one’s temperament and aptitude, he could only grant himself the identity of an outer disciple, learning merely the rudiments of the sect’s techniques.

If in the future there came an opportunity to advance to Golden Core, he could enter the sect’s secret grounds on his own and officially become an inner disciple, rebuilding the Sword Sect.

“…Golden Core…”

Song Yan was speechless.

With his own level of aptitude, being able to build a Foundation in his lifetime was already a blessing from heaven.

Golden Core? He wouldn’t even dare to think about it.

The letter said that since the sect’s founding, it had only passed through four or five generations.

Combined with the fact that now, apart from himself—this lucky opportunist—not a single disciple remained, and the sect master’s whereabouts were unknown and his fate uncertain… considering all this…

Song Yan believed this must have been some ancient, unassuming sect. In terms of scale alone, it probably couldn’t even compare to the Dongyuan Sect.

This could also explain why it possessed such a precious secret technique as Five Star Meridian Capture, capable of cultivating divine sense.