Mortal Shell Steals Dao, Sword Points to Heavenly Gate

The air inside Tingxue Tower seemed to freeze for a moment.

Xiao Hongxiu looked down at the still-bleeding head at her feet. Tuli's eyes were wide open, the terror of his final moments frozen on his face, as if he had seen some unspeakable horror.

"Such a fast sword."

Xiao Hongxiu praised, but didn't look at the head. Instead, she raised her eyes to look at Ji Ye.

The black-clad figures behind her finally came back to their senses. Their muscles tensed, and a trace of undisguised shock appeared in their gazes towards Ji Ye. To kill someone right under Qin Wuji's nose and still escape unscathed required not only martial skill, but also courage.

"Tea that has gone cold can be replaced. But if a person breaks their word, they are worse than tea dregs."

Ji Ye casually placed his iron sword on the table, emitting a crisp "clang" that sent ripples across the surface of the tea in the cups.

"Prepare the carriage."

Xiao Hongxiu stood up, her red robes like fire, stirring up a fragrant breeze as her wide sleeves moved.

"This Princess will take you to witness the true foundation of Da Liang."

Within the imperial palace, the night was as deep as the sea.

The massive palace walls stood tall and imposing in the darkness, like a slumbering beast, swallowing all light and sound.

A carriage without any markings slowly entered the Xuanwu Gate under the watchful eyes of the Jinwu Guards.

The wheels rolled over the bluestone slabs of the imperial road, emitting a monotonous and dull sound.

Inside the carriage, Xiao Hongxiu closed her eyes to rest, while Ji Ye, through a corner of the curtain, watched the imperial guards standing like statues outside.

"How many experts are hidden in this palace?" Ji Ye suddenly asked.

"Not many."

Xiao Hongxiu did not open her eyes, her voice flat. "There are twelve enshrined at the Organ Tempering realm. And three at the half-step Grandmaster realm."

Ji Ye's fingers tapped lightly on his knees.

Twelve Organ Tempering experts and three half-step Grandmasters. This force was enough to sweep away any martial arts sect.

"And true Grandmasters?"

Xiao Hongxiu opened her eyes, a smile playing on her lips, neither smiling nor frowning.

"Grandmasters?"

She looked at Ji Ye as if he were a child who didn't know the immensity of the heavens and earth.

"Do you know how many exceptionally talented individuals Da Liang has produced in the past hundred years? Those who reached peak Organ Tempering at thirty, half-step Grandmasters at forty, hailed as geniuses descended from the Martial Star, there were eight hundred, if not a thousand."

"But what was the outcome in the end?"

Xiao Hongxiu pointed to the deep night sky outside the window.

"They all died at that half-step."

"Organ Tempering is easy, Meridian Opening is difficult. Though there is only half a step between a half-step Grandmaster and a Grandmaster, it is a chasm. It requires a mortal body to sense the energies of heaven and earth, draw qi into the body, and refine the marrow. One wrong step leads to shattered meridians and death."

"There are no Grandmasters in this palace."

Xiao Hongxiu's voice carried a hint of imperceptible regret and reverence.

"If there were Grandmasters guarding it, how would the Barbarians dare to water their horses at the Yellow River?"

The carriage stopped before a solitary tall building.

Tianlu Pavilion.

The nine-story building, with its upturned eaves and brackets, looked particularly desolate in the deep palace. No lamps were lit inside; only the moonlight spilled onto the glazed tiles, casting a cold and lonely glow.

At the entrance sat an old eunuch, as thin as a stick. He wore a faded grey robe and held a broom in his arms, dozing off.

Xiao Hongxiu alighted from the carriage and bowed slightly to the old eunuch.

"Eunuch Zhao, this Princess has brought someone to read books."

The old eunuch's eyelids twitched, and he laboriously opened a slit. His eyes were cloudy, as if covered by a layer of cataracts.

His gaze swept over Xiao Hongxiu, finally landing on Ji Ye.

In that instant, Ji Ye felt as if he had been stripped naked and thrown into an ice cellar.

A cold, obscure, yet vast as the sea aura flashed and disappeared from the old eunuch.

A half-step Grandmaster.

And one of those old monsters who had been immersed in this realm for sixty years, only a sliver away from breaking through.

"Rules, Your Highness understands."

The old eunuch's voice was hoarse, like two pieces of rotten wood grinding together. "You can only read on the first floor. Only for one hour. You cannot take them away, nor copy them."

"Thank you, Eunuch."

Xiao Hongxiu stepped aside, gesturing for Ji Ye to enter.

Ji Ye cupped his fists in a salute to the old eunuch and stepped over the threshold.

As he passed by the old eunuch, the withered fingers suddenly moved, and the bamboo twigs of the broom trembled slightly.

"Youngster, it's good to have high aspirations."

The old eunuch didn't turn around, just murmured in a low voice, "But in this Tianlu Pavilion, there are more geniuses who've gone mad than dust on the ground."

Ji Ye's footsteps paused slightly. He didn't speak and walked straight into the pavilion.

The interior was filled with the scent of old books and a faint aroma of sandalwood.

Rows upon rows of massive bookshelves stretched to the ceiling, laden with countless rare and secret manuals. But Ji Ye didn't even glance at the martial arts techniques that would make people in the martial world fight to the death. His gaze was locked directly onto a stone platform in the center of the main hall.

On the platform, a purplish-gold box was enshrined.

The box was open, revealing a scroll within. It was neither gold nor jade, emitting a faint green light.

Supreme Induction Chapter.

This was the Da Liang imperial family's treasure, a supreme secret text rumored to directly point the way to the Grandmaster's path.

Ji Ye took a deep breath, adjusted his breathing, and let his heartbeat merge with the tranquility of the pavilion.

He walked to the stone platform and looked down.

The scroll had no illustrations, only dense text. The characters were ancient and peculiar, resembling seal script yet not quite, each stroke seeming to contain a unique rhythm.

[Martial Dao Heavenly Eye] activated.

Buzz—

A roar echoed in Ji Ye's sea of consciousness.

In his eyes, the static characters suddenly came alive. They were no longer ink marks but streams of moving energy, like a tangled mess, or like the complex star charts in the night sky.

"This is..."

Ji Ye took only one look before his eyes stung, and tears flowed uncontrollably.

This wasn't about martial arts techniques at all.

It was an explanation of a "principle."

All things in heaven and earth have energy. Wind and clouds are energy, grass and trees growing and withering are energy, and the flesh and blood of humans are also energy.

To open the meridians, one must capture a trace of the "innate energy" drifting in the world, use it as a guide to ignite one's own Internal Strength, transforming the acquired into the innate.

But this was too difficult.

The characters in his eyes constantly reorganized, disassembled, and evolved.

Annotations from predecessors were densely written along the edges of the scroll.

"Energy flows through the Conception and Governing vessels, like treading on thin ice. Thirty years without progress, regret! Regret! Regret!"—This was the final testament of a certain prince.

"Sensing heaven and earth? Absurd! Human effort has its limits, how can one sense the heart of heaven? A scam! All a scam!"—This was the graffiti of a certain worshipper after going mad.

Countless brilliant predecessors had crashed and bled before this scroll.

Ji Ye felt his head was about to explode. Countless complex and obscure thoughts surged like a bursting river, scouring his sea of consciousness. It was a burning sensation, like a mortal trying to stare directly at the sun.

"Pfft."

Ji Ye felt a sweetness in his throat, and a trace of blood seeped from the corner of his mouth.

He abruptly closed his eyes, cutting off the [Martial Dao Heavenly Eye]'s scan.

His body swayed, and he had to reach out and steady himself against the stone platform to remain standing.

Cold sweat instantly soaked his back.

After less than the time it takes for an incense stick to burn, his mind was almost completely depleted.

"That was close."

Ji Ye wiped the blood from his lips and gasped for air.

This Supreme Induction Chapter was like a giant vortex. If he had been greedy and tried to deduce the entire text just now, his fate would likely have been to suffer internal energy backlash and become one of the madmen the old eunuch outside spoke of.

"The path to Grandmaster truly cannot be paved solely with resources."

Ji Ye opened his eyes again. The fervor in his gaze receded, replaced by a deeper solemnity.

He was like a child who had just learned to walk, yet was attempting to climb a sheer cliff.

"But..."

Ji Ye looked at the scroll emitting green light, a stubborn curve forming on his lips.

"Even a stone, if struck long enough, can spark."

He activated his [Martial Dao Heavenly Eye] again, but this time, he wasn't greedy.

He focused solely on the first sentence.

[Misfortune and blessings have no fixed abode, they are brought upon oneself.]

Eight characters.

Ji Ye concentrated all his mental energy on the turns of the brushstrokes and the flow of energy within these eight characters.

At this moment, his triple [Martial Arts Through Divinity] talent transformed into an invisible, exquisitely sharp carving knife.

If an ordinary person studied this book, they could only kneel outside the Heavenly Gate, praying for a sliver of sudden enlightenment.

But Ji Ye was different.

He did not kneel.

He gripped the blade called "Talent" and, following the grain of those eight characters, began to cut, one stroke after another.

Separating the silk from the cocoon, discarding the false to retain the true.

The originally obscure and difficult characters were forcibly deconstructed in his eyes into the most basic lines.

This stroke, like a mountain falling stone, was the weight of qi sinking into the dan tian.

That slash, like an ancient withered vine, was the resilience of qi flowing through the extraordinary meridians.

He no longer saw words.

He saw eight swimming dragons and snakes, eight shackles locking the Heavenly Gate.

And the blade in his hand was slowly prying open the gaps in these shackles.

Even if his fingertips bled, even if his sea of consciousness ached fiercely.

He would still carve out that sliver of vitality belonging to mortals from the cracks of the Heavenly Dao.

This was mortals stealing the Dao.

Using mortal wisdom to forcibly dissect the principles of heaven and man.

"Found it..."

Deep within Ji Ye's pupils, a faint, yet truly existing blue light was reflected.

It was a thread of vitality he had forcibly carved out from the sliver of the tightly shut Heavenly Gate.

Outside the pavilion.

The moonlight was cold.

"One stick of incense has passed."

The old eunuch, holding a broom, didn't even lift his eyelids. "He's not crazy yet, nor dead. This kid's life is quite tough."

Xiao Hongxiu stood in the moonlight, gazing at the closed door, her expression profound.

"If he dies, this game of chess I'm playing will lose a pawn that has crossed the river."

"Your Highness, why do you place so much importance on him?" the man in black behind her asked in a low voice. "This person is wild and untamed; he may not be willing to be controlled."

"Precisely because he's wild, he's useful."

Xiao Hongxiu turned around, her gaze sweeping towards the direction of the brightly lit Qin family mansion in the distance.

"That prodigy from the Qin family has already set one foot into the Meridian Opening realm. If he becomes a Grandmaster, Da Liang will no longer be surnamed Xiao."

"The imperial family has no one, and the honored elders are all old."

Xiao Hongxiu's voice carried a bone-chilling coldness.

"I need a sword. A sword with no roots, no attachments, and one sharp enough."

"Even if this sword eventually breaks, as long as it can knock out a few teeth from the Qin family, it will be worth it."

If you feel this book is good, remember to add it to your bookshelf to avoid losing it next time.