The envoy from Lord Changping was a tall, gaunt middle-aged man whose left palm and the web between his thumb and forefinger bore thick calluses—clear signs of someone skilled with a left-handed sword. His breathing came in deliberate patterns of three long inhales and one short exhale, steady as a mountain stream, marking him as a true master, one of the finest in the jianghu, yet utterly unknown to the world. This spoke volumes of how deeply Lord Changping concealed his talents.
"Greetings, Sect Leader Wuchenzi!" The envoy performed a proper Daoist bow.
Li Haime returned the gesture with a nod, then said, "My thanks to Lord Changping for his generous gift. But I must admit my curiosity—Lady Huayang has already sent Lord Chang'an and Young Master Chengjiao here. So why this extra effort from Lord Changping? Could it be some discord between him and the Queen Dowager?"
The envoy chuckled lightly. "Sect Leader Wuchenzi jests. My lord shares a bond with the Queen Dowager as close as mother and son—how could there be discord? No, this visit has a different purpose entirely." He paused, feigning a touch of embarrassment.
The stage was set; how could Li Haimo not play along? He pressed forward at once. "Then might Lord Changping require some assistance from our Daoist school?" He emphasized Daoist school with deliberate weight, a subtle reminder for the envoy to weigh whether Lord Changping could afford to provoke the full might of the Daoists, not merely the divided sects of Heaven and Man.
The envoy caught the implication but kept his composure unruffled. "It's a shameful admission, Sect Leader, but you may not know how the whims of nobles often spell life or death for those beneath them. As the saying goes, 'When the King of Chu favors slender waists, the palace fills with the starved.' My lord has a passion for collecting the Three Hundred Swords of the Book of Songs, and upon learning that the twin blades Jianjia and White Dew reside in Daoist hands, he often laments missing out on such treasures. So, acting on my own initiative, I've come to humbly request that you part with them. In exchange, I'd offer Daoist ritual swords of equal caliber. I hope, Sect Leader, you can understand the precarious position of underlings like me."
The envoy was clearly a sharp operator, deftly distancing Lord Changping from the request by framing it as his own bold presumption. This way, he offended no one from the Daoists while leaving the door open for future negotiations if this bid failed.
"Ah," Li Haime replied. "But as you know, Jianjia and Bai lu were our Heaven Sect's betrothal gift. The wedding ceremony includes a sword-bestowal rite—swapping them out at the last moment would tarnish our Daoist honor. Where would our face be then?" His tone grew stern.
"On that score, Sect Leader, you needn't worry. The exchange needn't happen in haste; we can make it after the wedding, no delay at all. And rest assured, the ritual swords from Lord Changping's estate will surely meet with your approval." The envoy spoke with quiet confidence, and seeing no objection from Li Haimo, he visibly relaxed.
Everyone knew how particular the Daoists were about swords—mere famed blades, no matter how renowned, earned scarcely a glance if they weren't ritual swords forged in the Daoist tradition. Thus, upon discovering that Jianjia and Bailu were in Daoist possession, the Changping household had scoured high and low for comparable Daoist ritual blades. They had originally set their sights on the famed sword Lingxu, only for it to be gifted to Wuchenzi by the Mohists. They had no choice but to seek alternatives.
"Which Daoist ritual swords might Lord Changping be willing to offer?" Li Haimo asked with a smile. He phrased it as "which" in the plural, not singular—though Jianjia and Bailu were treated as a matched pair in the Heaven Sect, they weren't truly a dual-wield set for one person. Any trade would require two swords. Moreover, their ranking in the sword annals wasn't low; finding equivalents among famed blades was no small feat.
"The famed sword Tian Ding and the famed sword Mengdie," the envoy replied.
Li Haime was taken aback. Tian Ding wasn't merely famed—it was divine. Jianghu hailed it as the Divine Sword Tian Ding, one of the orthodox treasures of the Daoist canon, holding a status even above Qiu Li and Xue Ji. The blade was a thing of legend, also known as the Tian Ding Warrior, said to cleave mountains and fill seas with a single stroke. It originated from the Daoist Scripture's Tian Ding chapter—no coincidence that the scripture lacked a Tian Ding strategy, for Tian Ding embodied it all: a sword, a man, a warrior, a volume unto itself. To wield Tian Ding was to grasp an entire chapter of the Daoist Scripture.
"I never imagined you'd unearth even the Divine Sword Tian Ding!" Li Haimo had resolved beforehand to refuse any offer, no matter the terms. But the Tian Ding was no ordinary prize—its emergence would draw not just the Daoists, but the Yin-Yang School and every sword master under heaven. None would let it slip away.
Mengdie, while a famed sword in its own right, paled beside Tian Ding's renown. Legend held that it sprang from Zhuangzi's butterfly dream, nurtured on his own vital blood until it fluttered free. When Zhuangzi awoke from his transformation, the butterfly danced on the wind alongside him, only to crystallize into a sword of dazzling splendor upon his return to wakefulness—hence its name, Dream Butterfly or Mengdie. It ranked twenty-sixth in the sword registery, its obscurity stemming from the fact that no one had glimpsed it since Zhuangzi's time.
"Actually," Li Haimo ventured, testing the waters, "there's another sword from the Three Hundred of the Book of Songs in our Daoist hands."
The envoy's eyes lit up with unguarded excitement—an unexpected windfall. "Which one might that be? The Changping estate would spare no effort to exchange it at equal value."
"The famed sword Cai Wei," Li Haime said, feigning casual indifference while watching the man's face from the corner of his eye.
The envoy sighed. "Alas, for that... the Changping estate lacks a Daoist ritual sword of matching caliber to offer in trade."
"No matter," Li Haimo replied with a warm smile. "It needn't be of the same rank—any famed Daoist ritual sword will do. We've already gained the upper hand with the Divine Sword Tian Ding; we can't very well let Lord Changping come out the loser."
"That... I'll need to consult the chief steward back home. Deploying a famed sword is beyond my authority," the envoy said, hesitating.
Li Haimo's heart sank into shadow. So, after more than a decade together, it turns out he's the enemy after all. This betrayal cut deeper than Mu Xuizi's—it wasn't rooted in Human Sect loyalties like Mu's had been. Jing Yunzi had been planted in the Daoists from the very start, a serpent in the garden.
"Then I'll await Lord Changping's personal arrival at the Human Sect!" Li Haimo declared, pointedly summoning the lord himself.
Embedding spies in rival sects was tolerable—every house played that game. But once uncovered, there'd be no mercy, especially if the puppeteer behind it was exposed. And though Lord Changping might one day wield immense power, the Daoists of today were a force he dared not provoke.
_
That very afternoon, Lord Changping's men delivered two sword cases. Li Haimo accepted them without a flicker of reaction and headed to the forbidden grounds behind the Heaven Sect's mountain retreat. Only Chi Songzi, Xiaoyaozi, and Xiao Meng accompanied him—the Human Sect had produced two moles in quick succession, eroding trust in the rest. And the allure of the Divine Sword Tian Ding was too great a temptation. Unless it rested in Bei Mingzi's hands, peace would forever elude them.
"Is this the Divine Sword Tian Ding?" The cases sprang open to reveal Meng Dié at a glance: its blade shimmered with seven-colored glaze, the hilt crowned by a vivid butterfly in mid-flight, trailing streams of firefly glow with every swing.
That left the other as Tian Ding—a short sword of pure gold, as if forged from the metal of the gods. It appeared an unremarkable longsword at first, but its weight rivaled a mountain; no wonder it was dubbed the Tian Ding Warrior. Only a Yellow Scarf Warrior could hope to swing it freely. Even Bei Mingzi would need to summon his full strength just to lift it.
"So heavy," Chi Songzi remarked. "It must outweigh even Ju Que, the heavy sword ranked 101st in the sword registery."
"It's no mere short sword—it's meant to be this way," Bei Mingzi said, peering at the broken edge. "Only once you've mastered the Tian Ding arts will it unveil the divine might of the true Tiān Dǐng Sword."
They leaned in for a closer look. The blade's surface crawled with ancient script—tadpole-like glyphs, dense and twisting. The upper half bore a lone character for "heaven," the lower a stark "ding," but the rest defied recognition. Even Li Haime, versed in tongues beyond count, had never encountered such markings. Were they combined into words, or each symbol a solitary sigil? It was impossible to say.
"I'll keep it here for now," Bei Mingzi declared. "Give me time to study it—perhaps something will come of it." The others gathered up Dream Butterfly and hurried from the forbidden grounds, half-afraid that lingering a moment too long might provoke another of Bei Mingzi's mad whims.
And with the Divine Sword Tian Ding now in his grasp, even if he swung it like a club, none of them could withstand the blow.
_
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