Mortal Shell Steals the Dao, Sword Pointed at Heaven's Gate

The air inside Tingxue Tower seemed to freeze for an instant.

Xiao Hongxiu lowered her head and looked at the still-dripping head by her feet. Tuli's eyes were bulging wide, the terror from before his death frozen upon his face, as though he had seen some indescribable horror.

"What a fast sword."

Xiao Hongxiu praised him, yet she did not look at the head. Instead, she raised her eyes toward Ji Ye.

Only now did the black-clad men behind her come back to their senses. Every muscle in their bodies was taut, and their gazes at Ji Ye carried an unmistakable trace of shock. Killing someone beneath Qin Wuji's very nose and still retreating unscathed required not only martial skill, but nerve as well.

"Cold tea can be replaced. But if a person breaks their word, they are not even worth the dregs of tea."

Ji Ye casually set the iron sword on the table. It rang out with a crisp clang, sending ripples across the tea in the cup.

"Prepare the carriage."

Xiao Hongxiu rose to her feet, her red robes blazing like fire as her wide sleeves swept up a fragrant breeze.

"I will take you to witness the true foundation of Great Liang."

The imperial palace, deep into the night, was like an ocean.

The enormous palace walls towered through the darkness like a slumbering colossal beast, devouring all light and sound.

A carriage without any markings slowly passed through the Xuanwu Gate beneath the watchful eyes of the Imperial Guards.

Its wheels rolled over the bluestone slabs of the imperial road, producing a monotonous, muffled rumble.

Inside the carriage, Xiao Hongxiu rested with her eyes closed, while Ji Ye peered through a corner of the curtain at the forbidden troops standing outside like statues.

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

"Not many."

Without opening her eyes, Xiao Hongxiu replied evenly, "There are twelve Organ Tempering Realm Attendants and three Half-step Grandmasters."

Ji Ye lightly tapped his fingers against his knee.

Twelve Organ Tempering experts and three Half-step Grandmasters. That force was enough to sweep through any martial sect.

"What about true Grandmasters?"

Xiao Hongxiu opened her eyes, a faint, unreadable curve appearing on her lips.

"Grandmasters?"

She looked at Ji Ye as though he were a child who knew neither the height of the heavens nor the depth of the earth.

"Do you know how many peerless geniuses Great Liang has produced over the past century? There were no fewer than eight hundred or a thousand talents who reached great completion in Organ Tempering before thirty, became Half-step Grandmasters before forty, and were hailed as martial stars descended to earth."

"But what became of them in the end?"

Xiao Hongxiu pointed toward the profound night sky beyond the window.

"They all died at this half-step."

"Organ Tempering is easy; Meridian Opening is hard. Though Half-step Grandmasters and Grandmasters are separated by only half a step, that half-step is a heavenly chasm. One must use a mortal body to sense the workings of heaven and earth, draw qi into the body, and temper the marrow and bones. One wrong step, and the meridians shatter inch by inch, leaving one dead and gone from the Dao."

"There are no Grandmasters in this palace."

A trace of imperceptible regret and reverence colored Xiao Hongxiu's voice.

"If a Grandmaster stood guard, how would the Barbarians dare water their horses in the Yellow River?"

The carriage stopped before a solitary tall tower.

Tianlu Pavilion.

The nine-story tower, with its upturned eaves and interlocking brackets, appeared especially lonely within the depths of the palace. No lamps were lit inside. Only moonlight spilled over the glazed tiles, casting a cold, desolate gleam.

At the entrance sat a wizened old eunuch, thin as a stick. He wore a washed-out gray robe and held a broom in his arms as he nodded off.

Xiao Hongxiu stepped down from the carriage and gave the old eunuch a slight bow.

"Eunuch Zhao, I have brought someone to read."

The old eunuch's eyelids twitched, and he laboriously opened them to a slit. His eyes were utterly cloudy, as though covered by a layer of white film.

His gaze swept past Xiao Hongxiu before finally settling on Ji Ye.

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

A chill, obscure, yet ocean-vast aura flashed from the old eunuch's body and vanished.

A Half-step Grandmaster.

And one who had immersed himself in this realm for sixty years—an old monster only a thread away from piercing the window paper.

"Your Highness knows the rules."

The old eunuch's voice was hoarse, like two rotten logs grinding together. "You may only read on the first floor. Only for one hour. You may not take anything away, nor may you copy it."

"Thank you, Eunuch Zhao."

Xiao Hongxiu stepped aside and gestured for Ji Ye to enter.

Ji Ye clasped his fists toward the old eunuch in salute and stepped over the threshold.

Just as he passed by the old eunuch, those withered fingers suddenly moved, and the bamboo twigs on the broom trembled faintly.

"Young man, having high aspirations is a good thing."

Without turning his head, the old eunuch merely muttered softly, "But there are more geniuses gone mad in Tianlu Pavilion than there is dust on this floor."

Ji Ye paused slightly, said nothing, and walked straight into the pavilion.

The pavilion was filled with the stale scent of old books and a faint fragrance of sandalwood.

Rows upon rows of massive bookshelves stretched all the way to the roof, packed with countless rare manuals. Yet Ji Ye did not even glance at the martial arts that would make people of the martial world fight until their heads bled. His gaze locked directly onto a stone platform in the center of the hall.

Upon the stone platform rested a purple-gold box.

The box stood open, containing a scroll of bamboo slips that was neither gold nor jade, glimmering with a faint azure light.

The Supreme Induction Chapter.

This was the Great Liang imperial family's treasure that protected the nation, the supreme secret scripture rumored to point directly toward the great path of Grandmasters.

Ji Ye took a deep breath and adjusted his breathing, allowing his heartbeat to merge with the silence within the pavilion.

He walked to the stone platform and lowered his head to look.

There were no illustrations on the bamboo slips, only densely packed writing. The characters were ancient and archaic, neither quite seal script nor not, every stroke seemingly containing a peculiar rhythm.

[Martial Dao Heavenly Eye] activated.

Buzz—

A thunderous roar erupted within Ji Ye's sea of consciousness.

Before his eyes, the motionless characters suddenly came alive. They were no longer ink marks, but streams of wandering qi, like a tangled mass of hemp and like a complex star map in the night sky.

"This is..."

Ji Ye had only looked once when a stabbing pain struck his eyes, and tears streamed down uncontrollably.

This was not a martial arts technique at all.

It expounded a kind of "principle."

All things between heaven and earth possessed qi. Wind rising and clouds surging were qi; grass and trees withering and flourishing were qi; the flesh and blood of the human body were also qi.

To achieve Meridian Opening, one had to capture a thread of the "innate qi" drifting between heaven and earth, use it as a guide to ignite one's Internal Strength, and transform the acquired into the innate.

But this was far too difficult.

The characters continuously reassembled, broke apart, and evolved before his eyes.

The annotations of predecessors densely filled the edges of the bamboo slips.

"Qi travels through the Ren and Du Meridians, as though treading on thin ice. Thirty years without advancing an inch. Hate! Hate! Hate!"—the final words of some prince.

"Sense heaven and earth? Absurd! Human strength has its limits. How can one sense the heart of heaven? A scam! It is all a scam!"—the deranged scribblings of some Attendant after he went mad.

Countless astonishingly gifted predecessors had smashed themselves bloody against this scroll.

Ji Ye felt as though his head were about to explode. Countless complicated and obscure thoughts surged like a river bursting through its dikes, madly scouring his sea of consciousness. It was the scorching sensation of a mortal trying to stare directly at the sun.

"Pfft."

Sweetness rose in Ji Ye's throat, and a thread of blood spilled from the corner of his mouth.

He abruptly closed his eyes, cutting off the probing of the [Martial Dao Heavenly Eye].

His body swayed, and he had to reach out to support himself against the stone platform before barely managing to stand firm.

Cold sweat instantly soaked through his back.

He had looked for less than the time it took an incense stick to burn, yet his mind was nearly exhausted.

"That was close."

Ji Ye wiped the blood from his mouth and gasped heavily.

The Supreme Induction Chapter was like an enormous whirlpool. Had he greedily rushed ahead and forcibly tried to deduce the entire text, he would likely have suffered disordered meridians and become one of the madmen the old eunuch outside spoke of.

"The road to Grandmaster truly cannot be traversed merely by piling up resources."

Ji Ye opened his eyes again. The feverishness in them had faded, replaced by an even deeper solemnity.

He was like a child who had only just learned to walk, yet dreamed of climbing a sheer cliff.

"However..."

Ji Ye looked at the bamboo slips flowing with azure light, a stubborn curve lifting at the corner of his mouth.

"Even a stone, if struck long enough, can yield sparks."

He activated the [Martial Dao Heavenly Eye] again, but this time, he did not seek too much.

He stared only at the first sentence of the opening passage.

[Fortune and misfortune have no gate; people summon them themselves.]

Eight characters.

Ji Ye concentrated every shred of his mind upon the turns of the brushwork and the circulation of qi within those eight characters.

At that moment, his threefold [Martial Arts Through Divinity] talent transformed into an invisible carving knife, sharp to the utmost extreme.

If ordinary people studied this book, they could only kneel outside heaven's gate, praying for that fleeting flash of enlightenment.

But Ji Ye was different.

He did not kneel.

He gripped this blade called "talent" and carved downward stroke by stroke along the patterns of those eight characters.

Drawing out silk threads and peeling away cocoons, discarding the false and preserving the true.

The originally obscure characters were forcibly dismantled before his eyes into their most fundamental lines.

This stroke was like a boulder falling from a towering mountain—the heavy meaning of qi sinking into the dantian.

That slash was like ancient withered vines—the resilient force of qi moving through the extraordinary meridians.

What he saw was no longer writing.

He saw eight writhing dragons and serpents, eight shackles locking heaven's gate shut.

And the blade in his hand was prying open the cracks in those shackles bit by bit.

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

He would still dig out that thread of vitality belonging to mortals from between the fingers of the Heavenly Dao.

This was how mortals stole the Dao.

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

"I found it..."

Deep within Ji Ye's pupils was reflected an exceedingly faint, yet truly existing, azure glow.

It was the thread of vitality he had forcibly gouged from the crack of heaven's tightly shut gate.

Outside the pavilion.

The moonlight was cold and clear.

"One incense stick's time has passed."

The old eunuch held his broom without even lifting his eyelids. "He has not gone mad, and he has not died. That boy's life is rather tough."

Xiao Hongxiu stood beneath the moonlight, watching the tightly shut doors with an unfathomable expression.

"If he dies, then I will have one fewer pawn that has crossed the river on this chessboard."

"Why does Your Highness value him so highly?" the black-clad man behind her asked softly. "This man's wild nature is difficult to tame. He may not be willing to serve at your command."

"Precisely because he is wild, he is useful."

Xiao Hongxiu turned around, her gaze directed toward the distant Qin family residence, brightly lit in the night.

"That Qilin child of the Qin family already has one foot in the Meridian Opening Realm. If he becomes a Grandmaster, then Great Liang will no longer bear the surname Xiao."

"There is no one in the imperial family, and the Attendants have all grown old."

A bone-piercing chill seeped through Xiao Hongxiu's voice.

"I need a sword. A sword with no foundation, no attachments, and enough sharpness."

"Even if that sword breaks in the end, as long as it can knock a few teeth from the Qin family, it will have been worth it."

If you think this book is good, remember to add it to your bookshelf so you will not have trouble finding it next time.