Swordlight Like a Meteor

Swordlight Like a Meteor

The pills refined from beast blood damaged the soul. By contrast, pills made from human blood merely heightened negative emotions, which could be dispelled through meditation.

Chen Ye had never been able to understand the reason for this difference.

Only after reading that detailed record did an immature conjecture take shape in his mind. Suppose beasts and humans were essentially no different, and the effects of their blood pills were the same. Then, logically, the principle behind their side effects should be the same as well.

If the principle was the same but the results differed so drastically, perhaps the crux lay in what was called "clashing." Books offered thousands of explanations for such clashes, but most merely listed the things that clashed. Occasionally, they mentioned ways to resolve them, yet never said a word about why the clash occurred.

Those predecessors seemed to have been in a tearing hurry. They only knew to warn their successors, "Never do this," while leaving out the crucial part: "Why not?" Perhaps they were too lazy to investigate, or thought that recording everything in writing was too much trouble and cut whatever they could. After all, most cultivators only needed to follow what they'd been taught. Understanding the reasons behind it wouldn't help their cultivation.

Take Chen Ye's master, Mo Ci. He had always cultivated by the book, following each step without ever digging deeper. Hadn't he still cultivated formidable magical power?

Had fate not dealt him a cruel hand and brought him face-to-face with a prodigy of the Qinghe Sword Sect, Mo Ci might well have broken through several more realms. Even if he couldn't become an immortal, he could have lived for centuries longer.

Of course, some people harbored ill intentions and deliberately made things up.

Chen Ye had found contradictions and errors in several ancient cultivation texts. Most likely, they came from the rotten old custom of "masters holding something back from their disciples."

The True Disciple's teachings were like a puzzle with a crucial piece missing. They were afraid their disciples might learn everything and then raise the Ten Thousand Soul Banner against them.

No wonder. Most of us demonic cultivators are like that.

Chen Ye was stubborn by nature. In his eyes, cultivation was the most important thing in life, and he had to get to the bottom of it. Drawing on what he'd learned and realized over the past few months, and comparing it with the results of his experiments, Chen Ye believed that the root of the blood pills' clashing effects still lay in the soul.

The foundation of cultivation was spiritual energy. All the strange and wondrous things in this world arose from it.

A cultivator's soul was far more resilient than an ordinary person's, yet after death, it still needed spiritual energy to take shape as a ghost. Otherwise, a gust of wind would scatter it.

What if a beast's soul could also influence spiritual energy? Then the part most vulnerable to its influence would undoubtedly be the spiritual energy originally contained in the heart's blood and refined into the pill.

Demonic cultivators refined pills from heart's blood. The pills contained not only spiritual energy released through digestion, but also beast souls that had not yet fully dissipated. Taking a blood pill meant absorbing that spiritual energy into oneself and refining it a second time.

In that process, it was hard to avoid absorbing the lingering souls into one's body as well. Once enough had accumulated, they would naturally affect one's mind.

Why could Human Blood Pills dispel the effects? Because human resentment was broadly similar from person to person. Humans all had four limbs and five senses, and by comparing themselves with one another, they found little difference.

Humans could understand human suffering.

What they could understand, they could work through themselves.

Only by understanding the cause could one resolve the confusion.

But beasts' senses were different from humans' to begin with. If a beast's soul entered a person's mind, how could a human possibly understand what it felt like to walk on all fours and eat raw flesh and drink blood? What's more, beasts' hearing, smell, and other senses were all unlike humans', making the clash all the more violent.

It sounded complicated, but in short, humans couldn't understand beasts.

By the same logic, beasts couldn't understand one another, either.

That was why a wild boar still died after taking a Wolf Blood Pill, displaying wolfish habits before its death. Its soul had been eroded by the wolf's.

In a word, different species couldn't mix. That was why the Blood Refining Method required one to consume creatures of the same kind.

It wouldn't be difficult to verify this theory. There was still some Wolf Blood Pill left. All he had to do was catch a wolf and feed it the pill to find out.

Chen Ye's theory was that feeding a wolf a Wolf Blood Pill would, at most, make it restless and irritable. It wouldn't drive the wolf mad or kill it outright.

Once he'd settled on the idea, Chen Ye carefully put away the record and hurried out of the ruined temple under cover of darkness. If he didn't catch a wolf tonight, he feared he wouldn't be able to sleep.

Zhao Hezhou had just finished throwing up everything in his stomach. When he looked up, Chen Ye was nowhere to be seen. While he was still wondering what had happened, he saw his wife pick up the wild wolf Chen Ye had brought back. With a small knife in hand, she deftly skinned and butchered it, getting ready to put it in the pot.

Watching his wife's nimble hands, Zhao Hezhou couldn't help stopping her. "Wait, that's the strongman's catch! It wouldn't be right to take it without asking..."

His wife shot him a fierce look and scolded him, "You've read so many books by the sages, yet you're as stupid as an ox when it comes to dealing with people. Dear, do you really think that young man needs you to do things for him? He was just giving you a way to save face. If he didn't want to help us, why would he have been so generous yesterday? How can you not see that?"

Thinking it over, Zhao Hezhou realized his wife was right. His face flushed red with embarrassment, and he hurried off to fetch firewood, secretly vowing not to be so pedantic again.

By the time the wolf stew was ready, Chen Ye still hadn't returned. On an ordinary day, Zhao Hezhou would have waited for his benefactor to come back before daring to eat; anything else would have been improper. But now, he quietly divided up the stew, setting aside a generous portion for Chen Ye before letting his wife and child fill their stomachs first.

Though he had set aside some of the customary formalities, Zhao Hezhou now understood that empty courtesies couldn't fill a stomach or keep his wife and child alive. He even planned to ask the strongman to take him on as a servant when Chen Ye returned. He didn't care if he had to toil like an ox or a horse, so long as his wife and child could eat their fill. Books by the sages, success in the imperial examinations—none of it was worth a copper coin when their lives were at stake.

But even after midnight, Chen Ye still hadn't returned. Zhao Hezhou grew more and more anxious, afraid that Chen Ye might meet with an accident while wandering in the mountains at night. If the strongman really had run into danger... Zhao Hezhou thought it over, gave his wife a few instructions, then grabbed a torch and strode out of the ruined temple to look for Chen Ye.

At that very moment, Chen Ye was two hills away.

The young man sat atop a craggy boulder, facing a wolf below. The beast was scrawny, its eyes bloodshot as it glared viciously at Chen Ye, as if it would tear him to pieces the next instant.

Chen Ye merely smiled, watching the beast without blinking. Perhaps because he'd hunted without restraint over the past two days, it had taken him half the night to find a lone wolf with a limp. After feeding the wolf a Wolf Blood Pill, Chen Ye waited quietly for the medicine to take effect.

It wasn't until the moon reached its zenith that the lame wolf finally showed signs of a change. First, it ignored its injured leg and lunged at Chen Ye, snapping at him with all its might. Then it threw back its head and howled. Compared to its half-dead state before, it was now full of energy.

Afraid he might accidentally kill his test subject, Chen Ye quickly hid behind the boulder and watched patiently. Two hours had passed since the medicine took effect. The lame wolf was unusually irritable, but it hadn't gone completely mad.

According to Zhao Hezhou's records, both wild boars had died within an hour of the medicine taking effect. This lame wolf was much thinner, yet after two hours it was still alive and kicking. Chen Ye felt certain his theory was right.

The Wolf Blood Pill contained the lingering soul of a wolf, but to a wolf of the same kind, it didn't cause a clash. It was merely the resentment left behind before death that made the lame wolf so irritable.

Its temperament had changed drastically, but its soul hadn't been damaged.

Chen Ye burst into laughter and recorded the results in detail. Now that he'd found the crux of the matter, all that remained was to figure out how to remove the lingering soul's influence. Once he overcame that obstacle, Chen Ye would become a butcher, slaughtering hundreds or even thousands of pigs, cattle, and sheep. His dantian and sea of qi would be within reach.

Just as he was celebrating, Chen Ye suddenly heard Mo Ci's voice. "Silence. Hold your breath and steady yourself."

Though Chen Ye was puzzled, he didn't ask right away. He pressed his lips tightly together and made his breathing as faint as possible.

At that very moment, a brilliant streak of light cut across the sky.

Only after the light vanished beyond the horizon did Chen Ye hear Mo Ci speak again. "It's all right now."

Chen Ye hurriedly asked, "Master, what was special about that shooting star?"

"What shooting star?" Mo Ci's tone was grave. "That was the swordlight of the Qinghe Sect! Anyone who could fly on a sword was at least a cultivator of the Tongxuan Realm. They could cut off your head with a single glance."

Chen Ye suddenly understood. The direction in which those two streaks of swordlight had vanished was precisely where Cui County lay.

"They say a sword is like a shooting star"—that was no exaggeration. The lunatic impersonating the Qinghe Sword Sect was probably in for trouble.