Wang Ming sneaked into Mount Song at night, discovering that the security work of the Songshan Sect was done extremely well. There were simply too many sentry posts in the residential area, making it very difficult to infiltrate. In the end, having no other choice, he could only hide in Dragon Roar Hall, a place that basically had no guards at night.
As soon as he entered, he saw the screen behind the chair directly in front of the main hall, inscribed with columns of precepts, various plans for merging the Five Peaks Sects, attacking the Sun Moon Holy Cult, and finally assaulting the Shaolin Temple and Wudang...
Actually, this Zuo Lengchan can be considered the number one outstanding figure in The Smiling, Proud Wanderer, but unfortunately, times were against him.
Wang Ming walked forward, sat on that chair, placed both hands on the armrests, and looked at the empty hall ahead.
It feels somewhat interesting.
Sitting in Zuo Lengchan's position, he wondered if this fellow sat here every day daydreaming about becoming the Wulin alliance master!
Suddenly, Wang Ming felt that this chair felt a bit wrong when sat upon. He reached his hand beneath the cushion, discovered a secret compartment underneath, and pulled out a book.
Wang Ming instantly perked up. By the moonlight, looking at the four large characters "Ice True Qi" on the cover, Wang Ming was immediately excited.
Zuo Lengchan was simply a genius. Back then, the Five Peaks Sword Sects and the ten elders of the Sun Moon Holy Cult fought twice at Mount Hua. The skilled fighters of the five sects were almost entirely killed or injured, and many exquisite moves and ultimate techniques of the five sects' swordplay vanished along with those elite masters.
Zuo Lengchan gathered the surviving elders of his sect, and regardless of whether they were crude or refined, recorded every single sword move that each person remembered, compiling them into a sword manual.
Over several decades, he culled the dross and selected the essential, modifying the sect's various insufficiently fierce moves and unmajestic postures one by one, making the sect's seventeen routes of sword techniques flawless. Although he had not created any new sword paths, he could still be considered a great contributor who organized the Mount Song Swordplay.
Most importantly, he also created the "Ice True Qi"—one of the rare internal martial arts with elemental attributes in the Jin-style wuxia world!
Not only was he extremely talented in martial arts, but he was also quite outstanding in tactics. Although his grand strategy was lacking, he could still be described as stunningly brilliant.
Unfortunately, he lost at the hands of those three old schemers: Fangzheng, Chongxu, and Yue Buqun.
Wang Ming felt that the Songshan Sect in this world was not simple.
There was a theory that the Songshan Sect was established by retired soldiers from the imperial court simply because Zhu Yuanzhang started out relying on the Ming Cult, and they were meant to keep an eye on the martial arts world. Otherwise, which sect would be so suicidal as to build its headquarters right next to the Shaolin Temple? Could it be that the Shaolin monks were truly benevolent at heart?
The weapons of Mount Song were also those wide military broadswords, and they even wore armor. This was quite extraordinary! In ancient times, possessing a blade or sword was nothing, but armor meant breaking the laws. (The Li Yapeng version featured armor.)
Yet the Songshan Sect remained completely safe and sound, which meant there was definitely a problem.
When the Ming dynasty fell, the Songshan Sect also vanished. He remembered there was a version where Zuo Lengchan was a man of the imperial court.
By the moonlight, Wang Ming memorized the manual, put it back in its original place, and then flew up to the roof beams, concealing himself above.
Wang Ming's strike on the roof beams, brewed with accumulated momentum for a long time, had wounded even the formidable Zuo Lengchan's arm.
As expected, it is my first time and I lack experience! Wang Ming thought to himself.
Zuo Lengchan's strength was solidly powerful and by no means a fraud. He possessed extremely rich combat experience and dodged the fatal vital point at the critical moment.
The assassination could be considered a failure.
Assassin's Creed: if a blow does not succeed, flee a thousand miles.
Once discovered, an assassin must escape; this was the awareness an assassin had to possess.
Yet Wang Ming said: Bah! An assassin should go wushuang, slaughter everyone, and that counts as a perfect stealth mission. Zuo Lengchan's life, Wang Ming was going to claim!
Jesus Himself couldn't keep him!!!!
After a few bounds, Zuo Lengchan rushed out of Dragon Roar Hall and arrived at the large plaza where disciples practiced martial arts.
Those two gate-guarding disciples who had turned and fled without hesitation were now leading a large crowd toward the plaza.
They surrounded Dragon Roar Hall three layers deep and three layers outside, making it very difficult to escape even if one wanted to.
Zuo Lengchan was protected in the rear by a group of Mount Song experts, who were simultaneously helping Zuo Lengchan bandage and treat his wound.
At this moment, the grand protectors still at Mount Song raised their swords and pressed toward Wang Ming.
The thirteen grand protectors of Mount Song were all clad in armor and wielded giant swords. Beneath the sect leaders of various factions, they could be called invincible.
One must ask: throughout the entire pugilistic world, everyone wielded swords two fingers wide, but their swords were a palm's width wide, and they wore armor with ridiculously high defense. Who encountered them and didn't curse?
Wang Ming indeed showed not the slightest bit of fear, as if he were the one surrounding everyone present.
"Who are you, and why did you ambush Master Zuo?" Zuo Lengchan asked with a gloomy expression.
"I am the number one swordsman of Dongying, Hichuan Gangban." Wang Ming spoke with a heavy colonel accent.
"Dongying people? I do not know how my Zuo family has offended you, that you come to assassinate me." Zuo Lengchan asked, suppressing his anger.
"Hahahaha!!!! You haven't offended us, you are standing in our way."
"In our way?"
"Heeheehee!!! First execute the Five Peaks Sword Sects, then annihilate Shaolin and Wudang. To reign supreme in the martial arts world, none other than our Dongying." Uttering a speech heavy with a colonel accent, everyone present flew into a rage upon hearing it.
"Hmph! Arrogant! Kill this dwarf for me." Zuo Lengchan ordered.
In an instant, the gazes of the Mount Song grand protectors turned cold, heart strike surged, and they pressed forward directly abandoning martial virtue.
Wang Ming grasped a long sword of Dongying style in both hands, meeting their attack head-on.
The Dongying blade was something Wang Ming had spent a great deal of money to have forged on the road.
Coming to assassinate Zuo Lengchan, he naturally dared not use Mount Hua Swordplay and standard Mount Hua swords.
Wang Ming was not a reckless Linghu Chong; revealing traces of Mount Hua would bring trouble to the Mount Hua Sect if the assassination failed.
Even if the assassination succeeded, what if witnesses ran to Shaolin and Wudang and demanded they make the Mount Hua Sect give an account? Wasn't that also trouble?
He was here to solve problems, not create them.
At this moment, it was precisely the scorching noon, with the blazing sun roasting the earth.
Wang Ming raised the Dongying blade high and slaughtered toward several Mount Song grand protectors.
As he drew close, he tilted the blade of the Dongying sword in his hand, using the mirror-smooth blade to reflect the dazzling light of the sky straight into their eyes, causing brief blinding.
"Ah—"
With a single slash, he swept across the neck of a grand protector whose vision had yet to recover its strength. Necks without armor protection were their weakness.
After the slash, he rapidly vaulted backward, dodging the sword flashes chopped downward at him by the remaining five grand protectors.
Clang clang clang!!! The Mount Song grand protectors' weapons collided with one another.
Seeing that their old strength had just faded and their new strength had yet to be born, Wang Ming immediately executed a lightning-fast direct thrust.
"Swish!"
A single blade-tip landed right at a grand protector's throat. Instantly, bright red blood appeared like a fountain. That grand protector wore a look of utter astonishment on his face and collapsed powerlessly. His final thought: How can there be swordplay with such speed?
Outside the arena, Zuo Lengchan, who was still having his wound bandaged and treated, looked at the two fallen grand protectors with extreme grief and indignation. Although these fellows called him Senior Brother, they were actually taught by him hand-in-hand. He had not expected two to be lost in such a short span of time.
Even so, Zuo Lengchan still did not enter the fray to fight. The reason was not only that he was treating his wound, but there was an even more important reason.
He discovered that although this assassin hid his head and showed his tail without daring to see the light of day, his martial arts were quite formidable and not the least bit inferior to his own. He wanted to let others test the waters first so that he could observe this person's martial arts style.
The more he observed, the more puzzled he became. The martial arts of this masked man in black were simply straightforward Dongying swordplay, yet they were unusually fierce.
His height and body shape also did not match any of the experts he knew. Zuo Lengchan was puzzled in his heart: Where on earth did this expert pop up from?
How could an overlord of an era like Zuo Lengchan believe Wang Ming's words so easily?
The grand protectors currently at Mount Song were almost all killed by Wang Ming in this short span of time.
Yet Zuo Lengchan could not make head or tail of it at all; he only felt that this person's swordplay was bizarre beyond measure.
For instance, this masked man in black thrust a sword at a grand protector's throat. Clearly the sword was not fast, and he knew this grand protector's strength—all he had to do was turn his sword back to block it. Yet this person foolishly swung his sword to the right, precisely exposing his vital spot.
This swordplay was precisely "Illusion Sword".
The Mount Song grand protectors' vision was deceived by Wang Ming's sword light. An illusion of blade afterimages appeared in their eyes, making them think a sword was coming from the right, but they ended up slashing empty air.
The "The First Under Heaven World" far surpassed the "The Smiling, Proud Wanderer World".
"Illusion Sword" was not a top-tier martial art in that world, but in this realm, it was top-tier.
Its moves were extremely simple—one could say it had no moves.
Its absolute core was primarily the calculation formula for light and dark illumination alongside the secret technique of bursting forth with extreme speed, so blades could be used and swords could be used as well.
Wang Ming was even less afraid of people seeing through his origins and thereby tracking down the Mount Hua Sect.
Besides, the moves utilized were some Dongying sword techniques mixed into the "Illusion Sword" by Duan Tianya, making it even harder to see through.
Under the condition of driving the secret technique of Illusion Sword burst, he very easily resolved these grand protectors.
He looked at Zuo Lengchan in the distance, whose provocative gaze was extraordinarily arrogant.
"Die, scoundrel!"
"Clang!!!"
I don't know whose giant sword in Zuo Lengchan's hand collided with Wang Ming's long blade, vibrating Wang Ming's arm until it went slightly numb.
I cannot clash with him head-on. Wang Ming thought to himself.
Yet just as Wang Ming wanted to pull back his blade,
Zuo Lengchan's injured left hand directly grabbed the blade body, while his right hand abandoned the giant sword and struck out with a palm toward Wang Ming.
"Let you taste the might of my "Ice True Qi"."
An icy, bone-chilling aura traveled from the long blade to Wang Ming's palm. Wang Ming looked closely and cried out wildly in his heart: Holy shit, it's actually this exaggerated! Magic attack?!
He saw that Wang Ming's blade was already covered by a thick layer of ice. Now it didn't look like a blade at all, but rather like a club, and the freezing ice continuously spread toward Wang Ming's hand, frightening Wang Ming into letting go, dropping the weapon in his hand, and retreating at top speed.
Then he immediately used internal energy to expel the cold Qi that had entered his meridians.
Although Wang Ming had read the "Ice True Qi" manual, he hadn't expected the effect to be so exaggerated.
This martial art had no flaws.
To defeat him, one could only suppress him with sheer force.
Seeing Wang Ming retreat, Zuo Lengchan casually discarded the Dongying blade which was already wrapped in a large amount of freezing ice.
He glanced at the several grand protectors on the ground with their throats slit by a single blade, his heart filled with both sorrow and anger.
"Charge! Hack him to death with random swords for me!"
Zuo Lengchan had been suddenly ambushed and completely failed to see through the enemy's foundation. Unwilling to continue taking risks, he directly ordered numerous ordinary disciples to charge together, wanting to use a human-sea tactic to grind Wang Ming to death.
The human-sea tactic!
When people lacked infinite mana bars and infinite health bars, everyone felt fear.
Facing the nearly one hundred Mount Song disciples charging up, Wang Ming felt fear all the same, and thought in his heart: I cannot let them surround me; I must strike first to gain the upper hand.
"Baka, watch my Ninjutsu: Shuriken Shadow Clone Technique!"
Thousand Flowers Scatter Money
Wang Ming suddenly leaped three meters high, a large handful of shattered copper coins in his hand descending from the sky.
In an instant,
dense as a rainstorm, they poured down, the power of every single shattered copper coin being extremely horrifying.
On every single copper coin, there was a piercing force capable of splitting stones and piercing gold.
Whether the copper coins struck Mount Song disciples who had armor protection or places without armor protection, they were ruthlessly pierced through. In the end, the copper coins nailed themselves half a centimeter deep into the bluestone slabs on the ground.
Instantly, a large swath of the surrounding Mount Song disciples fell. The remaining people discarded their weapons and turned to run.
They were not specially trained suicide squads; knowing it was death yet still going forward, they didn't possess that kind of fearlessness.
After this move of Thousand Flowers Scatter Money, the Purple Mist True Qi inside Wang Ming's body was already completely empty.
If he hadn't had a veil covering the purple Qi on his face, Wang Ming wouldn't have dared to use the Purple Haze Divine Skill; otherwise, it would have been very easy to implicate Mount Hua.
"Dongying Ninjutsu?" Zuo Lengchan's expression startled, and then he instantly launched a killing strike.
At the moment when Wang Ming's new strength had yet to be born and his old strength had faded, this veteran of the pugilistic world seized the opportunity. The "Great Songyang Palm", imbued with "Ice True Qi", blasted out fiercely. Wang Ming handled it in a fluster, suffered a huge loss, and was sent flying over ten zhang away.
"Scoundrel, with your internal energy consumed so much, let's see if you die or not! Having killed so many of my disciples, I will hack you into a thousand pieces."
"Cough cough!!" Wang Ming coughed up a mouthful of blood, soaking the veil that covered his face.
Although he took this palm strike, Wang Ming did not sustain overly heavy injuries.
Granted, the "Indestructible Vajra Body" had yet to be successfully cultivated, making it impossible to transform into the Little Gold man, but he could still use a bit of body-protecting technique.
The Little Gold man was complete damage negation, whereas the body-protecting technique reduced damage.
Simply put, once the body-protecting technique was used, he ought to have been beaten to death, but instead resulted in just heavy injuries.
Exerting his full strength to unleash Traceless Gentleman's ultimate technique "Thousand Flowers Scatter Money" was also a move born of utter helplessness.
If he didn't use a single move to awe everyone, he would have been surrounded by several hundred Mount Song disciples and ground to death alive by the human-sea tactic.
Wang Ming complained internally: Should I also go find four beauties to carry my sedan chair? I have reason to suspect that Traceless Gentleman's feet never touch the ground simply to conceal the fact that he is a 7-second true man; he goes limp the moment he uses this move.
Zuo Lengchan flew forward with a horizontal palm strike. Wang Ming sidestepped to dodge, and from the palm that brushed past his ear, he could clearly feel that bone-chilling frost.
Wang Ming picked up the broadsword on the ground and forcefully suppressed his injuries to counter Zuo Lengchan's onslaught.
After clashing for several rounds,
Zuo Lengchan cried out in great alarm: "How do you still have true qi?!"
Wang Ming thought to himself: Foolish dog, daddy has two dantians.
However, as the combat continued, Wang Ming also grew anxious.
Palm Breaking Style
A sword thrust straight into Zuo Lengchan's heart, and then he retreated at top speed.
This was the wuxia world; with his heart pierced straight through, Zuo Lengchan was bound to die.
Since he was bound to die, Wang Ming naturally had to stay far away from him to avoid a final desperate counterattack.
An expression of astonishment and resignation surfaced on Zuo Lengchan's face. Why had the situation turned around so quickly?
Zuo Lengchan supported his final breath, refusing to fall; he did not want to die without knowing why.
Zuo Lengchan said: "You... you are not... not a Dongying... person. Who are you?"
Wang Ming said: "No comment."
Zuo Lengchan said: "What grievances do we have?"
Wang Ming said: "None."
Zuo Lengchan said: "Then... then why... come to slaughter..."
Wang Ming glanced at the frail Zuo Lengchan and said: "Peace."
Zuo Lengchan immediately grew excited, and then grew even frailer, like a candle in the wind, about to be extinguished at any moment.
"No grievances or animosity, it is merely a matter of stance."
"Stance! Good... good..." And then Zuo Lengchan thoroughly kicked the bucket.
Having finished this sentence, Zuo Lengchan exhaled his final breath in resignation, and an overlord of an era thus concluded his curtain call.
Finally, Wang Ming thought of that book "Ice True Qi". Such a stunningly brilliant martial arts grandmaster was worthy of respect, so he had told him an answer that wasn't an answer.
As for killing Zuo Lengchan and the rest, Wang Ming had not a single shred of psychological obstacle. To speak of justice and evil was far too hypocritical; to put it bluntly, regardless of how those in the pugilistic world packaged themselves, their essence was that of murderers.
Coming out into the pugilistic world, one had to have the readiness to die and own up to the consequences.
If one lost a duel, it was because one was not strong enough; if one was ambushed and surrounded, it was because one's intelligence was lacking.
Just like in the previous world, even if Wang Ming had been shot to death by a random volley of arrows sent by Zhu Wushi, Wang Ming wouldn't have gone to hate him because there was no need. In the end, his scheming was still insufficient, and he deserved to die. But if Wang Ming were to go back to "The First Under Heaven" and Zhu Wushi wasn't dead yet, Wang Ming wouldn't mind settling this account either.
By this time, the Songshan Sect had already been scared out of their wits by Wang Ming. Most had fled down the mountain, and a few grand protectors were not on the mountain.
That was fine too. Wang Ming was not here to slaughter their sect or extinguish their heritage, so letting them preserve a few sparks was for the best.
Wang Ming came to the Scripture Transmission Tower he had looked over the previous night, curious about how many martial arts manuals were stored inside.
Pushing the door open to enter, he found the place completely empty, save for several large bookshelves.
After a bout of searching, he found five manuals that Wang Ming deemed useful.
They were respectively: Great Songyang Palm, Mount Song Swordplay, Grass on Flying, Ladder Cloud Vertical, and One Reed Crossing River.
Ladder Cloud Vertical belonged to Wudang, while One Reed Crossing River belonged to Shaolin. Wang Ming was not surprised; collecting other sects' martial arts was normal, and since these two were not their core techniques, obtaining them was not difficult.
Wang Ming tucked them into his chest and left Songshan Sect.
When the external Great Paziers of Songshan returned and saw the ruined mountain gates, they were furiously ready to kill.
From ordinary disciples, they learned that the sect master had been killed by someone called Nichiwa Kangban, and consequently the Songshan Sect vowed to exact revenge.
Zuo Lengchan was dead, but the foundation he left behind remained, and in less than ten years they had recovered their breath.
During these ten years, they continuously sent people to Dongying to search for Nichiwa Kangban, slaughtering the Dongying martial arts world until its talent generation was severed.
The Xiao Ao world ends here. It is not that I cannot keep writing, but that there is no need.
For instance, going to flirt with Ren Yingying a bit, or replacing Dongfang with the Joe Chen version to open a massive harem.
Yet aside from padding the plot, it held no meaning for the protagonist.
Chasing Ren Yingying could not produce the plots you all wanted to see. Aside from the protagonist getting a rush, your feeling would be that the goddess in your memories had been arched yet again—in a word: disgusting.
The chapters are a bit few, which is indeed somewhat rushed.
Making the chapters numerous is also simple; for instance, starting from the gold-washing ceremony in Hengshan, the protagonist could just follow Linghu Chong to pad the plot, and I could write several hundred chapters, but is there any need to read them? Is Jin Yong's original work not wonderful?
Once again, I thank everyone for the recommendation tickets. I am very grateful!
Before you continue