Gu Chengming reached the Yunyue Sect's mountain gate just past noon.
The wind on the southern slope of the Emerald Screen Range ran a few degrees colder than on the northern side, carrying a damp, green reek of grass and wet timber. It funneled in between the stone walls flanking the gate and set the hem of his robe snapping.
The two stone doors stood over a hundred feet high. Across the lintel were carved the two characters for Yunyue, the strokes light and alive, each brush-tip drawn like a sword.
They were said to be the personal hand of the Yunyue Sect's first patriarch, and a faint trace of sword intent still lingered between the lines to this day.
Inside the gate, the reception laid on for him was hardly modest.
A column of Yunyue disciples in moon-white uniforms stood ranked to either side, some twenty of them, faces composed, long swords at their hips, spines straight as blades.
At their head stood a middle-aged steward, Fourth Realm cultivation, with a square, upright face.
"Holy Son Gu Chengming of the Hunyuan Sect. The Yunyue Sect has awaited you. I am Qi Wenyuan of the Steward Hall, sent by our Sect Head to welcome the Holy Son into the sect."
Gu Chengming had expected as much. He returned the salute without any change of expression. "You honor me, Steward Qi."
The words had barely left him when wind howled at his back, and Hua Daiyi came down in force with the whole pack of Hunyuan disciples behind him.
The old man's feet had scarcely touched the ground before he was craning about in every direction, muttering with audible regret. "Aiyo. This mountain gate of the Yunyue Sect's — how is it looking a fair bit shabbier than the last time this old man came through?"
Not loud, not soft. Precisely loud enough for the nearest few rows of Yunyue disciples to hear every syllable.
Gu Chengming shot him a silent look.
Martial Uncle Hua, could we possibly not start farming hatred the instant we walk in the door?
Hua Daiyi noticed nothing. He strode forward with great sweeping steps and raised a hand toward Qi Wenyuan with tremendous warmth.
"Old Qi! Long time, long time! Last time you came drinking at our Hunyuan Sect was — what, three years back? That jar of Biluochun of yours, is there any left —"
The smile on Qi Wenyuan's mouth did not shift a hair. "Elder Hua, I trust you have been well. Biluochun is no longer brewed. The last batch was last year, and the Sect Head has ordered the cellar sealed."
"Sealed? Aiya, what a shame, what a terrible sha—"
"The hour grows late."
Qi Wenyuan cut clean through Hua Daiyi's casting of social spells, turned, and swept a hand toward the interior of the gate. "Sword Demonstration Peak has been prepared. The disciples of both sects are already in place, and the Sect Head and the elders are waiting. This way, please."
Hua Daiyi's hand hung in midair, then withdrew sheepishly.
The challenge writ had set the bouts for today, and the Yunyue Sect plainly had no intention of leaving them so much as a spare moment anywhere outside the ring.
Qi Wenyuan's tone had been courteous enough when he said please, but his feet never paused for half a step — a clear declaration that no room for consideration was on offer.
Hua Daiyi pulled a face and threw Gu Chengming a look. Gu Chengming gave a small shake of his head and went first, following after their guide.
The Hunyuan party filed through the mountain gate in a line and stepped onto Yunyue ground.
Qi Wenyuan walked at the front, neither hurrying nor lagging, never turning to make conversation, never pointing out the scenery, treating every carved beam and painted rafter along the way as so much empty air.
The Hunyuan disciples, by contrast, were in fine spirits, treating the whole thing as a spring outing.
Most of them had never set foot in the Yunyue Sect before, and they gawked left and right at everything new, a few in the rear whispering behind their hands. That ease did not last long. The deeper they went, the heavier the air of sword intent grew along both sides of the mountain path, and on the rock faces one could make out the training scars left by cultivators of ages past, crossing and recrossing like a spider's web.
The muttering disciples fell quiet without quite noticing, and even their footsteps grew a good deal more disciplined.
The party followed the stone path deeper into the sect.
Their escort had grown by one: a Yunyue elder named Wu Yuan, who came out to meet them partway.
This Elder Wu was plainly of the hardline persuasion. All along the road he appeared to be introducing the carved beams and painted rafters around them, while every word carried an edge.
When they reached the stone bridge spanning a deep ravine, Wu Yuan slowed his pace and turned a half-smile on Hua Daiyi.
"Speaking of which, Elder Hua, our Yunyue Sect does have an amusing bit of history with Holy Son Gu. Three years ago our disciple Li Mozi was defeated at Holy Son Gu's hands, and his master, Liu Changfeng, had every intention of coming to offer the Holy Son some personal instruction. Unfortunately, Senior Brother Liu was waylaid on the road by rogue cultivators. His injuries have yet to heal, and he can do nothing but convalesce in bed. A great pity."
Hua Daiyi's eyes lit up, his whole face flooding with concern, the performance utterly seamless. "Aiyo, I remember the matter too! I simply never imagined it was so grave. He hasn't recovered even now?"
Wu Yuan's eyelid twitched twice, hard. He answered coldly through his back teeth. "Indeed not. Those two rogue cultivators were vicious to the bone, and they made a point of going after his face and every major joint in his body. Senior Brother Liu is Fourth Realm, but two pairs of fists beat one. Sinew and bone snapped clean through. He lay flat on his back for three full years, and only in the last few days has he managed to hobble about at all."
"Our Yunyue Sect has investigated for three years and never turned up so much as a shadow of those two rogue cultivators. Elder Hua's acquaintance is wide. Might you happen to know when the cultivation world produced two such champions of the sack-over-the-head?"
Standing to one side, Gu Chengming heard every word. His face gave nothing away, but the Bright Mirror Hung High in his mind.
So the second man swinging alongside Master that night really had been Martial Uncle Hua.
Faced with Wu Yuan's near-cannibal glare, Hua Daiyi did not so much as flinch. He slapped his thigh instead, righteous outrage all over his face.
"Outrageous! In broad daylight, such wicked conduct! If this old man knew who those two madmen were, he would rebuke them severely on Hall Master Liu's behalf!"
Having finished his performance, the old man stroked his chin. "Though, Elder Wu, do stop looking at this old man in that fashion. This old man is an honest sort. That night this old man was up on a peak brewing wine and discussing the Dao with young brother Ren Wencai of the Wenjian Sect. Isn't that right, Chengming?"
Gu Chengming nodded, obliging as ever. "It is so. This junior was there feeding the fire."
Wu Yuan drew in a deep breath, chest heaving, teeth nearly grinding to powder. "Elder Hua. I never said those two rogue cultivators struck at night."
Hua Daiyi did not blink, spinning nonsense on the spot. "Aiya, we cultivators can't tell dark from daylight when we're in seclusion, so naturally when we drink we drink from dawn straight through to dusk. In any case, that beating Hall Master Liu took was most educational. In future he had best bring a few more of his fellows along whenever he goes out."
Wu Yuan's face went iron-grey. He knew perfectly well he was no match for this old scoundrel in a war of words. He gave a cold snort, flicked his sleeve, quickened his stride, and did not speak again.
The rest of the walk passed in total silence. Qi Wenyuan kept to the front as their mute guide, while Wu Yuan marched alongside the column with a face like slate, having entirely abandoned any pretense of playing host.
The Hunyuan disciples were only too pleased with the quiet. A few of the younger ones traded eyebrow-waggles behind their seniors' backs and nearly failed to hold in their laughter.
Beyond the stone bridge the view opened wide, and Sword Demonstration Peak was finally before them.
The mountain had been shorn flat by a single stroke from some great power, leaving a vast platform of blue-grey stone.
But what drew every eye was the enormous ancient bell suspended directly above that platform.
The Yunyue Cease-Strife Bell.
Gu Chengming tilted his head back. That was a genuine top-grade Fifth Realm spirit artifact.
A shade inferior to his own Ink Lotus, perhaps, but not by any great margin.
The Cease-Strife Bell stood several dozen feet tall. Its bronze surface bore no trace of casting or fusion at all, only cut marks of varying depth, every one of them razor-keen.
The formation-glyphs graven into that bell, so the story went, were no artificer's work. They had been gouged into the bronze inch by inch by seventy-two full generations of Yunyue inner-sect elders, year upon year, using nothing but their own sect's sword art. Every scored line held the settled insight and sword intent of the sword cultivators who had come before.
And by Yunyue Sect custom, any outside sect that came to their door for a contest was required to sound that bell to open hostilities.
The thing was not merely staggeringly heavy. The bell's body radiated a vast repulsion of sword intent, so that an ordinary cultivator would struggle merely to draw near it, let alone strike it.
Every time an outside sect arrived to open the ring, it usually took a full eighteen Third Realm disciples of abundant blood and vigor, formed into a great array, to heave together at the massive clapper carved from thousand-year lightning-struck wood, and even then they could barely force it through the sword intent hard enough to ring.
As for what the ringing accomplished —
The artifact was named Cease-Strife. Naturally it was no ornament.
Once the bell tone spread out, a Fifth Realm law would descend over the whole of the Sword Demonstration Peak platform in an instant.
Even if the two on the stage had spent every last trump and stood a breath away from taking each other with them, that law could seize them both by the scruff and force them apart. On a dueling platform, it was a treasure beyond price for keeping the dead count at zero.
…
Before long, the Hunyuan party had taken their seats.
The viewing stands were divided east and west. The west was the Yunyue home side, elders and elite disciples gathered together, plainly and elegantly dressed, calm of bearing, all sword intent tucked neatly inward.
The east held the seats of the Hunyuan delegation. Hua Daiyi had planted himself dead center, sprawling, his dark red fighting robes glaring in that sea of white.
A half-flask of spirit wine sat at the old man's elbow, and behind him twenty Hunyuan disciples sat bolt upright, eyes clear and guileless.
The two camps faced each other across the platform, courtesy maxed out on the surface, currents running dark beneath.
Sect Head Qin Ruoxu did not appear. Deputy Sect Head Liu Yezhou acted as referee in his stead. The white-haired elder sat composed at the judge's table, his teacup already refilled twice, his face untroubled.
Liu Yezhou did not raise his voice, and yet it carried with perfect clarity to every corner. "Song Mingyuan of the Yunyue Sect. Holy Son Gu Chengming of the Hunyuan Sect. Stop at first touch. No secret transmissions of either sect."
The words had scarcely settled when two figures leapt down into the ring, one after the other.
Song Mingyuan, newly appointed elder of the Yunyue Sect's Azure Blade Peak. Third Realm, eighth level — cultivation level with Gu Chengming's own.
New-made elder or not, his name had circulated in the cultivation world for years, and he had been practicing the sword for nearly twice as long as Gu Chengming had.
Not that Gu Chengming particularly objected. Being set on someone his own age was no fun at all.
In a certain sense, the present arrangement still counted as bullying a junior.
Internally the Yunyue Sect rated the man highly: precise sword techniques, sound in both attack and defense, few openings.
The moment Gu Chengming's feet touched the stone, he had the other man's measure to seven or eight parts in ten.
Spiritual power circulating steadily, meridians with solid load-bearing capacity, a hidden edge inside that inward-drawn sword intent. The Yunyue Sect had sent out the top student of his tier in the very first match — the abacus of seizing the initiative rattling loud enough to hear.
Song Mingyuan cradled his sword and saluted, correct in every particular. "Holy Son Gu's name has long been known to me."
"You're too kind." Gu Chengming returned the salute, neither servile nor arrogant.
The two retreated three paces each, and their auras unfurled in an instant.
Song Mingyuan opened first, sword light unbroken and flowing, like moonlight pouring loose.
Gu Chengming did not draw. He slid half a step left, letting the point that drove at his face pass by a hair's breadth, and swept his right arm up crosswise, meeting the blockade with the outer edge of his forearm.
With the blood-and-vigor reinforcement of the Hundred Bones Resonance, the hardness of that frame of his had long since passed beyond anything ordinary among body cultivators. Iron rang on jade, a crisp burst of sound across the platform, and Song Mingyuan's long sword was knocked two full inches off line.
Song Mingyuan's pupils contracted. He shifted at once, the blade whirling back and breaking into a dense flurry of thrusts that hammered down over head and face — the Yunyue sword art's Star River Inverted, speed answering speed, the specific cure for a body cultivator's slow, clumsy footing.
Unfortunately, Gu Chengming was far slipperier than he had imagined. Wearing a body cultivator's skin, he moved on a sword cultivator's feet, weaving and turning through the unbroken curtain of sword light. He did not even reach for the Red Dust Phantom Body Art. The footwork of the Immortal-Concealing Wine-Sword Formula alone was enough to take that ferocious offensive apart down to the last thread.
Ten exchanges of that, and sweat had appeared on Song Mingyuan's brow. His all-out net of sword light had been picked apart bare-handed across thirty moves. For a direct-line disciple of the Yunyue Sect, a man raised on his own dignity, the damage was minor and the humiliation was total.
He had no idea, of course, that this was already Gu Chengming holding back the tide. Otherwise he would have been put down the moment he stepped onto the stage.
On the western stands, the Yunyue disciples' faces had turned distinctly unlovely. On the eastern side, Zhao Tieshan slapped his thigh in delight and was halfway into a whoop before a fellow disciple clamped a hand over his mouth.
"Holy Son, mighty…" Zhao Tieshan obligingly dialed the volume down to a level only their own people could hear.
Judging that he had given the Yunyue Sect quite enough face, Gu Chengming finally drew his sword.
Since he had chosen a contest of pointers, he naturally meant to use the true Flowing Cloud Moon-Following to probe for a few things.
The sound of the blade leaving its sheath was soft, all but swallowed by the wind off the cliff. Yet the sword intent that spread out with it sent an inexplicable tremor through every Yunyue disciple in the place at the same moment.
Because what Gu Chengming was using was precisely the Yunyue Sect's Flowing Cloud, Moon-Following Sword Art.
The instant the sword light unfurled, Song Mingyuan's eyes flew wide. The signature was far too familiar. How could he fail to know it?
The problem was that the Flowing Cloud Moon-Following coming off Gu Chengming's blade and the Flowing Cloud Moon-Following he had known all his life shared the same outward signature and nothing whatsoever beneath the skin.
The same opening form. The same lines of attack. The same framework of "cloud pursues moon, moon reflects cloud."
And yet the conception behind it stood a world apart.
The version Song Mingyuan had cultivated for over a decade always carried a nameless restless irritation woven through its sword intent, like clear spring water cut with strong liquor — bright to the eye, scalding down the throat.
He had always called that the proper edge of the Yunyue sword art, a sword cultivator's "aura of slaughter." He had called it that right up until Gu Chengming's blade came before his eyes.
The flowing cloud truly flowed. The bright moon truly kept its vigil. Cloud pursuing moon meant following, not hunting to kill. Moon reflecting cloud meant leaning together, never squaring off.
A seamless, natural wholeness. A tenderness that never parted for an instant.
Receiving that first stroke, Song Mingyuan's wrist shook without his willing it, and in that instant his sword intent was badly shaken.
Gu Chengming's sword light spread out through arcs the color of moonlight, unhurried as drifting water, every move round and without flaw.
Song Mingyuan's sword intent went on collapsing.
The harder he tried to resist with the routines he knew, the more thoroughly the other man's intent showed his own version riddled with holes. Every fracture line left by generations of patriarchs' careless revisions, every stiff graft, stood exposed with nowhere to hide before the original.
By the third stroke, Song Mingyuan could barely keep hold of his hilt.
His strength held. His Dao Heart was close to shattering.
[The Flowing Cloud Moon-Following is undergoing violent emotional fluctuations!]
[It grits its teeth, and inwardly it has never felt so magnificent!]
[Damned sword cultivators, damned Yunyue Sect — kneel!]
[Flowing Cloud Moon-Following favorability +5]
Only when Song Mingyuan had been pressed down until he sprawled on the stone did Gu Chengming let the momentum carry him into a stop.
No more. Any further and it really would be picking on people.
Song Mingyuan sat frozen where he was, the hand on his sword trembling beyond control, his face bloodless. His lips opened and closed several times without producing a single word.
Dead silence gripped the platform. Liu Yezhou unhurriedly raised his teacup, took a sip, and announced the result with bureaucratic evenness. "First match. The Holy Son of the Hunyuan Sect wins."
Song Mingyuan came off the stage with a step so unsteady he might have been walking on cotton. Several fellow disciples hurried up to support him, murmuring their concern. He only shook his head, his gaze already unfocused.
On the Hunyuan side the mood was festive. Zhao Tieshan and the rest fought their expressions with everything they had, but the corners of their mouths were harder to hold down than an AK on full auto.
Hua Daiyi went so far as to hoist his bowl and pour the wine down in great gulps, wiped his mouth on his sleeve, and laughed until every wrinkle on his face bloomed.
By custom, a tea's worth of time was usually left between matches so that both sides could adjust their choice of fighters. Liu Yezhou had already picked up a fresh cup, apparently content to follow that rhythm.
But Song Mingyuan had not yet reached his seat when a shriek of split air burst from the stands.
A grey-robed figure slammed into the ring like a loosed arrow and landed squarely in front of Song Mingyuan. The shockwave rolled out with a roar, cracking the blue flagstones underfoot into a web of fractures.
Qi Hengshan, Peak Master of the Yunyue Sect's Clear Radiance Peak. Fourth Realm, seventh level. Song Mingyuan's master.
The old man was lean and severe of feature, but his face had gone iron-grey to the point of blackness. Sword intent poured off him with no restraint at all, and the pressure of the Fourth Realm swept brutally across the whole field.
"Master…" Song Mingyuan jumped and hastily backed away.
Qi Hengshan did not spare his disciple a glance. His eyes were fixed on Gu Chengming.
The air dropped to freezing in an instant.
Liu Yezhou paused with his tea halfway up and frowned. "Peak Master Qi. The bout has concluded."
Qi Hengshan gave no sign of hearing. He advanced on Gu Chengming with long strides and halted thirty feet away, right hand pressed to his hilt hard enough to blanch the knuckles.
"Gu Chengming." There was tightly leashed fury in his voice. "You are a disciple of the Wenjian Sect. Where did you learn my Yunyue Sect's Flowing Cloud, Moon-Following Sword Art?"
It was a thoroughly discourteous question. Gu Chengming was just drawing breath to answer when Qi Hengshan snatched the thread away, his volume climbing step by step.
"I watched those last few strokes clearly! Your Flowing Cloud Moon-Following is practiced backward and upside down, a formless mess! The Yunyue conception demands an edge kept sheathed within, a sword-heart tempered through slaughter. And what do you do? Soft and limp as a woman, every trace of killing intent wrung out of it. What manner of Flowing Cloud Moon-Following is that supposed to be?"
"Plainly some third-rate heterodox branch's wild reworking!"
Gu Chengming raised an eyebrow. Not only was he not angry, he was faintly tempted to laugh.
Keep a forgery on the altar long enough and you mistake the original for street-stall junk.
Qi Hengshan clearly had no intention of leaving it there. His line of attack shifted. "Furthermore, three years ago you deliberately crippled our Yunyue disciple Li Mozi. You were nothing but an outer-sect disciple of the Wenjian Sect then, and your hand was already that vicious. And now you swagger up to our door and use my Yunyue Sect's own sword art to humiliate my sect's disciples!"
"So I will ask you plainly. You, Gu Chengming — in learning this sword art, what exactly is it you are after? Have you been coveting the Yunyue Sect's inheritance all this while?"
[The Hundred Bones Resonance is spitting fire, its text box juddering wildly: "Heavenly Emperor Gu! This old bastard is going too far! Use Infinite Love, let's pound him so deep into the ground they'll need a chisel to get him out!"]
Gu Chengming was no happier about it, but before he could react, the Hunyuan side boiled over first.
Hua Daiyi's palm crashed down on the table. His wine bowl leapt clean off it, half a bowl of aged brew splashing across the ground.
"Qi Hengshan!" The old man's voice cracked like thunder out of a clear sky. "If your Yunyue disciples can't take a loss, keep them off the stage! He lost fair and square, and you turn around and sling filth at a junior. What sort of sword cultivator's backbone is it you've been cultivating?"
Zhao Tieshan came to his feet with all twenty disciples in a single motion. After the beating they had taken in the Hat Tribunal, these lads had learned restraint, but the anger on their faces was entirely genuine.
Inside the Yunyue camp, the mood was a great deal more complicated.
More than a few disciples and younger elders wore awkward expressions, their eyes sliding away.
Shielding one's own to that degree was, frankly, shameless. Song Mingyuan had lost cleanly, and the other man had not even fought at full strength. For his master to leap out and throw a tantrum did the sect's reputation no favors.
But most of them wore a look of deeper unease. The shock of that Flowing Cloud Moon-Following was still fresh before their eyes. That round, gentle sword intent stood in such stark contrast to the version they had ground themselves down practicing that for a moment they had wondered whether they had been cultivating it crooked all along.
So when Qi Hengshan pointed at Gu Chengming and called it a wild reworking, what they felt instead was a quiet flood of relief.
Qi Hengshan had scrabbled through too many years not to feel the subtle shift in the arena. He drew a deep breath, and the iron-grey of his face settled quickly.
"I lost my composure just now."
He saluted Liu Yezhou first, then inclined his head slightly toward the Hunyuan side, pitching his posture remarkably low. "Elder Hua, do not take offense. This old man saw his beloved disciple thrown down and grew protective in the moment. If my words gave offense, I ask your forbearance."
Hua Daiyi snorted coldly and turned his head away.
Apology delivered, Qi Hengshan banked smoothly into his next turn. "That said, however, the bout just now genuinely pained this old man."
He shook his head, grief and indignation written all over him. "The Flowing Cloud Moon-Following that Holy Son Gu displayed diverges from my sect's orthodox transmission by a thousand li. Lest the sword cultivators of the world pass the error along from mouth to mouth, this old man makes bold today to volunteer—"
He set a hand on his hilt and bowed slightly, playing the elder to the hilt. "In the name of the Peak Master of Clear Radiance Peak, I would personally cross blades with Holy Son Gu in the Flowing Cloud, Moon-Following Sword Art. Let all those present see for themselves what the orthodox Yunyue sword intent truly looks like."
It was gloriously high-minded phrasing. Translated, it came to: I am going to get down there and beat you, and my reason is to teach you the correct grip.
It claimed the moral high ground of "defending the orthodox transmission," and it hung Gu Chengming over the coals.
When a senior swallows his dignity to offer "instruction," a junior who dares refuse is admitting a guilty conscience, admitting he doesn't dare.
Liu Yezhou's gaze traveled between the two of them twice. He knew every twist of Qi Hengshan's little schemes, but as referee, so long as both parties consented, he had no grounds to intervene.
"Holy Son Gu. What are your thoughts?" Liu Yezhou asked, going through the motions.
Several hundred pairs of eyes across the field pinned themselves on Gu Chengming.
Gu Chengming looked Qi Hengshan over. Fourth Realm, seventh level — the absolute backbone of the Yunyue Sect's fighting strength, close to a full major realm above him.
A laugh nearly escaped him. It seemed leaning on realm advantage was a Yunyue Sect tradition.
Li Mozi had leaned on realm advantage back then, and now a Yunyue elder had stepped in and it was the same story.
But the present situation suited Gu Chengming perfectly. He smiled. "Since Peak Master Qi is in the mood, this junior will of course oblige."
"Though since Peak Master Qi does so under the banner of 'instructing me in the Flowing Cloud Moon-Following,' then in this bout let us use nothing but the Flowing Cloud Moon-Following."
At that, Qi Hengshan's face shifted. He had been counting on the Fourth Realm seventh level to bury the man under sheer force.
But Gu Chengming had flipped host and guest in a stroke, dragging the rules from "anything goes" and nailing them down to "a comparison of sword intent." If he leaned too heavily on his realm advantage now, would they not say he had a guilty conscience?
Then again, however miraculous the rumors made Gu Chengming out to be, he was only a Third Realm junior. Why should he fear him?
At that thought, Qi Hengshan agreed outright. "…Very well. Then only the Flowing Cloud Moon-Following."
The next moment they stood facing one another, sword intent unfurling on both sides at once.
Qi Hengshan struck first.
Backed by Fourth Realm seventh-level spiritual power, his Flowing Cloud Moon-Following came wrapped in a bitter aura of slaughter, sword light like a gale rolling a blade's edge, tearing several silver-white arcs across the platform.
A senior taking the field in person, every stroke laden with pressure. Techniques honed across several thousand years of Yunyue transmission, wielded in Qi Hengshan's hands to their fullest: cunning lines, brutal force.
Gu Chengming, by contrast, kept to the same unhurried key as before, the original sword intent of the Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign spreading out like a stream over stones.
He never met that violent killing aura head-on, working instead by softness overcoming hardness and cleverness sidestepping clumsiness. Cloud pursues moon — the weight of it on following, not on hunting to kill.
Qi Hengshan's heavy blade came chopping down, and Gu Chengming's edge slid away along it like drifting cloud, neither catching nor blocking, borrowing the force to return it. Moon reflects cloud — the whole point being leaning together, never squaring off.
Gu Chengming's counters never took the route of overwhelming force, and yet every single one slotted with perfect precision into the thinnest gap in Qi Hengshan's sword intent. Every defect left by later generations hacking blindly at the method lay wholly exposed.
Qi Hengshan had practiced the sword for decades and reckoned he had long since refined this art to the pinnacle of mastery.
Instead, Gu Chengming's blade was a mirror that reveals demons, aimed squarely at the holes riddling his foundation. Conceptions that ought to have flowed onward had been artificially severed and crudely stitched to a stretch of slaughter-techniques — how could that stand against the original's seamless whole?
Ten exchanges in, Qi Hengshan's forehead was streaming sweat. The other man was demonstrably a Third Realm junior using the very same sword art, and yet the feeling was of trading blows with a senior and receiving instruction.
"Absurd!"
Qi Hengshan clenched his teeth, spiritual power surging wildly through him. He had decided to abandon martial ethics entirely and simply grind the man's sword intent to powder with a Fourth Realm seventh-level mana bar.
Unfortunately — compare stats with Gu Chengming?
The long sword in Gu Chengming's hand slid along Qi Hengshan's edge like drifting cloud and flicked, lightly.
Clang.
In that ear-splitting clash of metal, Qi Hengshan's guard opened wide. All that brutal spiritual power was shunted off to one side, and his center of gravity pitched forward beyond his control.
Gu Chengming rode the moment, drawing his sword back, and his right leg snapped out like a bowstring released, driving a kick squarely into Qi Hengshan's chest.
That, motherfucker, is what stats look like.
Crack.
The tooth-aching sound of breaking bone rang across the platform. Qi Hengshan's chest caved visibly inward, and Fourth Realm body-protecting true qi shattered like wet paper.
He went up like a kite with a cut string, spewing a mouthful of blood laced with fragments of viscera in midair, and flew backward over a hundred feet to smash down on the blue flagstones outside the ring.
The impact hammered a deep crater into the ground, stone chips spraying.
Qi Hengshan had no time even for a scream. His head lolled and he sank entirely into unconsciousness, meridians clearly ruined, gravely injured.
The Flowing Cloud Moon-Following roared with laughter: This is exactly what a treacherous sword cultivator deserves!
[The Flowing Cloud Moon-Following is evidently delighted, and thoroughly satisfied with your performance in beating up Yunyue Sect sword cultivators.]
[It feels that at this moment you are absolutely the least detestable sword cultivator in the entire world.]
[Flowing Cloud Moon-Following favorability +5]
At the same time, the whole field had gone deathly still.
If Song Mingyuan taking a beating was merely a younger cultivator outmatched, a thing one could gossip about afterward —
then a full Peak Master of Clear Radiance Peak, a Fourth Realm cultivator, having his defenses broken across realms by his own sect's art and then being kicked into critical condition, alive or dead unknown… that had passed well beyond entertainment.
It was, frankly, terrifying.
The pressure over the Yunyue camp plunged straight through freezing.
No one spoke. Disciples stared at one another. The expressions on the elders' faces were a whole gallery of their own.
A few of the old veterans huddled in a corner with their heads together, faces dark, watching Gu Chengming with eyes full of wariness.
Hua Daiyi was gaping himself, but he came back to himself quickly.
Qi Hengshan's fate was deeply gratifying, no question — but the whole affair had changed flavor because of it. The Yunyue Sect had lost face and taken casualties, and if they let it end here they would not be the Yunyue Sect he knew. Without any change of expression, the old man swept a glance across the several grim-faced Yunyue elders opposite.
Sure enough, the next moment an elder in dark blue-black robes rose leisurely from his seat.
Zhao Zhijie, First Seat of the Yunyue Sect's Enforcement Hall.
He did not go down into the ring to make a fool of himself. He simply stood at the edge of the viewing stands, hands clasped behind his back, and spoke in a measured, unhurried tone.
"Holy Son Gu's swordsmanship is exquisite. It has been an education for us all."
First the tall hat. Then the dagger at the end of the scroll.
"However, one doubt still lingers in my mind."
Gu Chengming stood on the platform and did not answer, watching the performance in silence.
"Holy Son Gu comes here representing the Hunyuan Sect. Every word and gesture of his is the Hunyuan Sect's face."
Zhao Zhijie smiled and moved to smooth things over. "Yet in two matches running, Holy Son Gu has used nothing but the sword."
"The Hunyuan Sect establishes its Dao on body cultivation. The Holy Son ought properly to be the standard-bearer of the body cultivator's lineage. But Holy Son Gu has used the sword from start to finish, and forgive my bluntness — the name and the substance seem not to match."
Zhao Zhijie spread his hands, his tone calibrated to a nicety. "Since he represents the Hunyuan Sect, propriety requires that he display body cultivation methods. Does Holy Son Gu not agree?"
In the Hunyuan seats, Hua Daiyi's beard bristled with fury at the words.
And as Zhao Zhijie's voice fell away, the Cease-Strife Bell hanging in the vault above began, all at once, to hum.
Across the ancient bell's surface, the intricate carved glyphs were lighting up one after another, too fast for the eye to follow.
Gu Chengming's gaze swept the stands.
In one corner sat several Yunyue elders, every one of them bolt upright and composed, the very picture of eminent, virtuous spectators — as though the ones covertly driving that Cease-Strife Bell were somebody else entirely.
Shameless. Truly shameless.
Gu Chengming sighed. They said that cultivators who came to the Yunyue Sect's door for a "friendly contest" seldom came to a good end, and that no one ever managed to fight at full strength against a Yunyue cultivator. He had not known why before. Now he did.
When the Yunyue Sect went to other sects for a contest, the theme was picking on juniors. When others came to the Yunyue Sect for a contest, they had to eat your underhanded tricks on top of it.
Utterly sickening.
As the Cease-Strife Bell gradually built up power, Gu Chengming felt with perfect clarity the circulation of spiritual power inside him beginning to drag. Every cycle through his qi sea ran half a beat slower than the one before.
At the same time, a lassitude crept quietly out through his hundred bones and four limbs.
This was the true essence of the Cease-Strife Bell's law — suppress the will to fight, blunt the spiritual power.
By rights the artifact existed to halt a contest that had run out of control. The bell tolls, and the whole field stands down.
But this pack of old relics had no intention of ringing anything. They were merely using the Cease-Strife Bell on the sly to deal with him.
To an outsider it would look as though Gu Chengming had simply run out of steam. Who would ever guess the official equipment was leading the match-fixing?
[Zhouli's Heaven-Human Heart-Rectifying Method surges with anger: "To wield a spirit artifact from the shadows. This is bullying beyond all measure."]
The Cease-Strife Bell's hum climbed several decibels higher. The intensity of the law's suppression rose again, spiritual power dragging through his meridians until it set the teeth on edge, and even breathing felt as though it had been poured full of lead.
Any other Third Realm cultivator would have been crushed to his knees by now.
Gu Chengming showed not the least sign of being affected.
He smiled, and it was rather the smile of a man laughing because he had been pushed past anger. "You gentlemen want me to display body cultivation methods?"
Shhk.
The crisp sound of a sword sliding home in its sheath carried with unusual clarity.
Zhao Zhijie blinked, taking it for Gu Chengming failing to weather the provocation, and felt a flush of satisfaction.
The next moment Gu Chengming released his hilt, and the ten fingers of his right hand curled slowly inward and closed tight.
Into a fist.
The instant that right fist sealed shut —
A dialogue box appeared before his eyes.
[The Hundred Bones Resonance is itching to go: Heavenly Emperor Gu, I have been waiting a long time for this!]
[These ungrateful curs need to be shown some color!]
Gu Chengming had no need to answer, because the power of Love's Hundred Bones Resonance had already descended.
Faint white light welled up over the face of his fist. At first it was no more than scattered fireflies leaking out between the seams of the bone; an eyeblink later, red-gold radiance forced its way in.
White and red-gold fused, collided, churned.
The light across his knuckles swelled at a rate that defied all reason — fireflies to a candle flame, candle flame gathered into a torch, until white-gold radiance detonated out of Gu Chengming's right fist and swallowed the entire platform in an instant.
The pressure pouring off that fist as it gathered was violent as a mountain collapsing, as a sea rising, freighted with a colossal force several major realms beyond his own cultivation, and it rolled without mercy over the perception of every soul present.
In the seat of honor, Liu Yezhou's pupils contracted sharply. His mind went blank; he could not even process it.
The might of that single fist was mid Fifth Realm at the very least.
A Third Realm cultivator, winding up a strike with the force of the mid Fifth Realm?
But it had all happened far too fast. He had no time to stop it, and no power to stop it either. The disciples in the stands fared far worse.
The front rows took the pressure full in the face, their bodies tipping backward beyond their control. Cold sweat sheeted down the foreheads of several Third Realm disciples in a heartbeat, their legs shaking like feet working a sewing machine. Those in the back rows kept their footing, but every one of them stood wide-eyed and bloodless.
Gu Chengming raised his fist.
The knuckles pointed straight up at that swaggering Cease-Strife Bell overhead.
"You wanted a demonstration."
He spoke, and his voice carried out through the roar of white-gold light.
"Then watch closely."
The fist fell.
The interwoven white and red-gold light churned, compressed, condensed across his knuckles, and all that appalling power gathered before the fist into a single point of light barely an inch across.
Then that point of light touched the body of the bell.
The Cease-Strife Bell made a sound. It was very like a scream.
Skreeee—
The white-gold radiance drove brutally into the bell's face and tore open the first fissure without pity.
The cracks raced outward in every direction faster than the eye could track. Lines of Dao-conception that dozens of generations of sword cultivators had carved with their heart's blood disintegrated inch by inch in that light, like a painted scroll devoured by fire.
Several thousand years of accumulated sword intent released in a single instant, lighting Sword Demonstration Peak bright as noon.
Broken stone came down like a cloudburst.
The blasted wreckage of the Cease-Strife Bell, dragging great slabs of mountain rock and fragments of the vault with it, traced a graceful parabola across half the mountain gate.
The Yunyue disciples along its path craned their heads back and saw a huge mass of bronze scrap come screaming across the sky in a shroud of dust and rubble, its vast shadow sweeping in turn over the ridgelines of three great halls before it crashed down at last beyond the foot of the mountain.
In the moment the Cease-Strife Bell shattered, the several dozen Yunyue elders hidden away and feeding it spiritual power took the backlash.
Blood ran from the corners of their mouths, seeped from their nostrils, was forced even out between their teeth.
One clutched his chest and dropped straight to his knees. Another dug both hands into the edge of a stone bench, trying to salvage his dignity by staying seated. A third simply rolled his eyes back and toppled over backward, the base of his skull striking flagstone with a dull, heavy crack.
Crimson blood soon stained the blue-grey stone of the stands' far corner.
The disciples and elders around them finally jolted out of their system crash. Some cried out and rushed forward to help; some fumbled frantically for their best pills—
But the overwhelming majority of the field stayed exactly where they were, staring like wooden chickens at the figure standing at the center of the ring with his fist drawn back.
No one dared make a sound. No one dared move.
The whole vast Yunyue Sect, several hundred living souls, without so much as a bird's cry among them.
Compared to what the spirit artifact managed, that single fist was the true cessation of strife.
And Gu Chengming stood at the center of every line of sight, sunlight draped over him, the last thread of white-gold aftertone dispersing entirely from his frame.
At last he spoke again.
"Using the sword just now was me protecting you."
He paused for the space of one breath, and that brief blank space pressed down hard enough to smother.
Then his gaze lowered, sweeping over the bloodless faces of the Yunyue elders with something almost like idleness.
"Without the sword, not many of you would have lived through today."
The Hundred Bones Resonance was spewing hearts across its dialogue box in a frenzy.
[♥♥♥♥♥♥♥]
[The Hundred Bones Resonance has plainly transformed into a squealing little fangirl, cheering: Heavenly Emperor Gu should have used that move ages ago! Heavenly Emperor Gu is mighty!]
[Hundred Bones Resonance favorability +10]
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