Chapter 308: Chapter 308

Since that little incident in the middle of the night, Li Xun didn’t bother thinking about “buddhist divine ability” or anything like that anymore.

Because he couldn’t meditate, he decided to pick up his brush and write until dawn. When the sky finally started to lighten, he grabbed his sword and headed up to Zuowang Peak to train.

Today, Ming Ji was testing his progress. The topic was “sword control in combat.” Sounded intense, but the real point was to see how he handled fighting, pursuit, and escape while suspended in open air with nothing to brace against.

Even before becoming a True Person, Li Xun could fly by guiding his qi without relying on external tools. Now it came even more naturally. Even with forty percent of his power sealed away, the sword light he produced was still sharp and agile.

Ming Ji held back at first and threw a few probing swords at him. Seeing Li Xun handle them with plenty of ease and room to spare, she got excited, like a hunter spotting good prey. Right then she stopped playing around and cranked her power all the way up. The sword qi surged out in thick waves, jumping several levels in an instant. The force turned cold and savage, like it could slice open the void itself. And anything in the way would have retreated on reflex.

Li Xun managed to block a dozen or so blows before he realized something. Although Ming Ji’s swordwork looked aggressive and sharp on the surface, it was actually smooth and seamless underneath. Up here on Zuowang Peak, where the heaven-and-earth primordial qi was ridiculously thick and concentrated, every single one of her moves, whether ripping through the air, pulling at the qi currents, or detonating from within, meshed flawlessly with the natural ebb and flow of the surrounding qi. Every sword strike rode the tide perfectly.

After a dozen or so strikes, the heaven-and-earth primordial qi started swirling and surging right along with Ming Ji’s sword momentum. It was like she was picking up chunks of Zuowang Peak and just chucking them at his head. With his cultivation crippled the way it was right now, how the hell was he supposed to block that?

With no other choice, Li Xun switched to the key tactic the assignment described. He used a close-quarters, life-on-the-line sword move, merged himself with his blade, burst out through Ming Ji’s sword net, and shot upward as fast as he could to get away.

Ming Ji watched him bolt away and let out a satisfied laugh. She kicked off right after him, riding her qi in hot pursuit. The two of them went back and forth like that. Him running for his life, her chasing with gleeful pressure. Li Xun had no chance to fight back, but damn if his sword flight wasn’t something else. His movements were lightning-quick and impossibly subtle, like a white pony flashing through a gap. Every single time he was about to get cornered for good, right when it looked hopeless, he’d slip out from some impossible angle, finding that one tiny crack in her net and vanishing through it again.

This repeated several times, and before they knew it, the entire morning had gone by. Ming Ji still hadn’t been able to pin him down.

In the end, it was Ming Ji who stopped first. She nodded and smiled, saying, “Say what you want, but your sword-flight is top-tier within the sect.”

Li Xun grinned. “Top-tier or not, I still spent the whole morning getting chased around by Fourth Martial Aunt. And you didn’t even go all out. I’m sweating through my clothes in the middle of winter, I swear I’m going to catch a cold like this!”

Ming Ji shot him an exasperated look and tapped his shoulder with her sword sheath. Something occurred to her, and she asked, “Last night, were you talking with Wenhai outside?”

Li Xun knew there was no hiding anything from all the eyes and ears on the mountain, so he admitted it directly, then added with a laugh, “I just tried to talk some sense into them…”

“That’s their family business. What makes you think you can butt in and talk sense?” Ming Ji scolded, though not without a touch of affection. Then she let out a quiet sigh. “Actually, it’s good that you talked to them. Especially with Abi. Among the disciples she’s close to, you’re the only one who can talk worth a damn… Your Mingru Martial Aunt and I don’t ask for much. We just want her to pull herself together a little and break through that mental block. If she doesn’t, forget cultivation, how’s she supposed to get through the long days ahead?”

Li Xun figured this had to be Mingru genuinely pleading with him. With Ming Ji’s personality, she wasn’t the type to get this petty or small-minded. He just didn’t know whether Mingru really trusted him that much or if she was simply desperate enough to try anything.

Those thoughts stayed in his head, but out loud he agreed to help. By then it was almost noon. Ming Ji still had things to discuss elsewhere, so she took off first. Li Xun had planned to head back and keep writing, but after hearing what Ming Ji had relayed, he felt like visiting Qi Bi instead.

After running for his life all morning, he was already close to the Three Absolutes Pass anyway, so it was right on the way.

The Ninefold Stone Mine up at Three Absolutes Pass… no matter where you look at it, that place had months of Li Xun’s sweat soaked into it. Decades have passed since then. The old mining area was completely overgrown now, swallowed up by new wild grass and trees. Looking closely though, you could still find the holes and sword marks carved into the towering rock walls from back then.

Forcing himself to let go of the bittersweet feeling of how much things had changed, Li Xun circled the area with the mine as the center. It took him roughly an hour before he finally spotted what he was looking for.

It was about a hundred li above the mine, in a patch of extremely dense forest.

A rather elegant bamboo building stood right in the middle of a small clearing deep in the thick forest. All around it were evergreen trees crowding in close, and off in the distance rose a tall, sheer cliff of bare rock.

A thin mountain stream ran down from above, dropping thirty feet or so to form a small waterfall that spilled into a little pool. Through the trees, the sound of water came through faint and clear, soothing without being noisy. Honestly, it was the perfect spot to settle your mind.

Finding it at all had been pure luck. If the weather hadn’t cleared today, and if the waterfall hadn’t caught the midday sun and flashed at just the right angle, he never would have noticed a house hidden this deep.

Now he stood atop the cliff, looking down, surveying the bamboo house inside and out.

Unexpectedly, from this angle, he could see inside through a small window on the upper floor of the bamboo house. He could even make out everything clearly, including Qi Bi.

Right now, she was sitting by the window, staring blankly at the snowy trees and grass outside. Her face looked heavy, downcast, joyless. The aura around her matched this quiet little forest house. Watching from afar, Li Xun suddenly felt the scene was worthy of a painting. It was a shame he didn’t have Zhong Yin’s talent with a brush!

Thinking of Zhong Yin naturally made him think of Qing Yin. He also remembered what Wenhai had said the night before, that this place had once been one of Qing Yin’s retreats. A nasty little thought bubbled up in his mind. Had Zhong Yin stood right where he was now, secretly watching a beauty through that very window? Haha!

He let out two dry chuckles, then suddenly felt there was nothing funny about it after all. He looked back toward the little house. The sadness between Qi Bi’s brows ruined his mood completely. He lost any interest in paying a visit and turned away.

Two more days passed. Li Xun kept up the same boring yet productive routine. The only change was that he cut his evening cultivation to ease the backlash from Blood Shadow.

Because of that, he had more time to write. His thoughts fell back into place and he had nearly fifty thousand words done by now. The manuscript blended illustrations with clear arguments and explanations, both sharp and visually straightforward. His only reader, Yin Wanderer, praised it to the skies.

That night, Li Xun felt a torrent of inspiration, almost too swift for his brush to capture. From a single, seemingly ordinary case of forbidden-pattern compounding, thousands of words poured forth packed with big ideas in simple phrasing. Even Yin Wanderer had to slam the table in admiration. Li Xun was pretty proud of himself too, and decided not to sleep at all. He would write straight through till dawn.

But just as the thought settled in, a sharp, sudden pain seized his chest mid-brushstroke. His hand trembled, and a heavy drop of ink splashed onto the paper, spreading into an ugly blot. Just like that, the manuscript was ruined.

Li Xun snapped his head up in shock, his heart pounding so hard he couldn’t calm down. Yin Wanderer grabbed his wrist and checked his pulse, then gently shook her head. No problem with the body at all. But the feeling was too strong. Li Xun couldn’t settle back into writing. He had to get up and pace around the room.

He remembered Yin Wanderer talking about that “clairvoyant sense” last time, and he couldn’t help thinking something terrible was coming. But soon he pushed that pointless thought aside and forced himself to focus, trying to figure out what the trigger could be.

Yin Wanderer was also thinking it through. She was far more experienced than Li Xun, and instead of letting her imagination run wild, she calmly organized a few possible names.

“Who have you run into on the mountain lately? Ming Ji, Qi Bi, Wenhai, Ling Ji, Shan Zhi…”

“Shan Zhi!”

For no clear reason, the moment Li Xun heard that name, something exploded in his chest. It was like finding the right direction in total confusion, and the sense of certainty hit him hard.

He didn’t even stop to think why. He slapped his palm down, then in his rush didn’t bother with the door and jumped straight out the window. Thankfully, when he took to the sword he remembered to hide its light and suppress his aura. Otherwise he would have stirred up trouble on Zhiguan Peak, which was full of experts.

Yin Wanderer paused for a moment, then vanished and followed after him.

Li Xun’s destination was the secluded valley where Shan Zhi was supposedly “in seclusion.” If everything was normal, the kid should still be inside drowning in self-pity and tears. But when Li Xun kicked open the loosely closed door and rushed into the house, all he saw were ransacked cabinets and more than a dozen medicine bottles scattered and overturned across the floor.

Something really happened!

Li Xun’s mind grew even sharper. He lunged to the cabinet in a few steps and ignored everything else. He went for the second shelf, third drawer.

He didn’t even need to pull it open. The drawer had already been yanked out and tossed aside. The jade bottles inside were tipped over in a mess, some even shattered. Li Xun’s face went tight as hell. He checked the bottles scattered on the floor, but… the one he was looking for wasn’t there.

Li Xun cursed under his breath and crushed a bottle at his feet into powder. From the air, Yin Wanderer’s voice asked curiously, “What’s wrong?”

“That bastrard’s gone crazy! He must have gone to find Qi Bi. Heaven knows what he’ll do… no, actually, there’s only one thing he’d ever do!”

For once, Yin Wanderer was genuinely confused. Luckily, she caught the key point fast. “What were you looking for just now?”

The corner of Li Xun’s mouth curved up into a smirk, but there wasn’t a trace of real amusement in his eyes. He just let out a low, cold “heh” and said: “Flying Dream Smoke.”

Yin Wanderer let out a soft “oh.” “That’s a treasure of the Bliss Sect. In terms of potency, it’s on par with rosemary. I see. You’re saying he took that stuff to use on Qi Bi. Haha… Mingxin Sword Sect really does produce interesting disciples.”

She paused for a moment, then added, “Why bother with him? Whether he gets what he wants or not, it’s all on him. What does it have to do with you?”

“Yeah. It is all him.” Li Xun gave a cold smile, every single one of his white teeth. “But that Flying Dream Smoke… I am the one who gave it to him. No matter what happens, I am tied to it.”

His voice came out ice-cold, but inside his head the feelings were a tangled fucking mess. That Flying Dream Smoke was something he picked up as spoils years ago after his clash with the Devour of Yang. Then sometime later, when he returned to the mountain and saw Shan Zhi all wrecked and “tormented by love,” he gave the incense to him half as a joke…

Shan Zhi had always been the type who thinks about it but never dares to do it. When he saw this kind of forbidden item, he was tempted yet still hid it away like a well-behaved child. Li Xun enjoyed watching his pathetic mindset, nothing more than a bit of mean amusement. At most he saw it as setting up an extra piece on the board. He never imagined that yesterday’s prank would turn into today’s consequence.

“So that’s it. That knot in my gut was about this.” He muttered a curse under his breath and didn’t dare waste another second.

In the last two days, word had already spread that Qi Bi was living alone at Zuowang Peak. If Shan Zhi was paying attention, he would definitely know. Which meant it wasn’t hard to guess where he had gone.