Man and Sword as One

The dust and grit all around were stirred up by an invisible force, slowly floating into the air. Seeing such terrifying power, Ling Fei could not help drawing in a sharp breath. Shu Mountain sword arts truly had their own unique merits. Ling Fei had thought their cultivation levels were no more than evenly matched, with only the slightest gap between them. Who could have known that Xu Jiankong possessed such a secret sword art?

Facing this sword strike about to be unleashed, there was no use in dodging or defending; only a head-on clash remained. Ling Fei immediately judged the situation and could no longer care about their earlier talk of a contest in swordsmanship. He pulled an apricot-yellow command banner, only three inches long, from his robes.

"Earth Center! E-Ji Banner! By the law, swiftly obey!" The apricot-yellow banner swelled in the wind, flashing with earthen-yellow light. The tiny three-inch banner expanded into one three zhang tall, countless tiny talismans faintly appearing and vanishing across its surface. Boundless earth-elemental power surged forth from the ground.

The crystalline blue light within the Flowing Ripple Sword merged perfectly with the earthen-yellow elemental power. A vast, weighty force spread outward, its momentum faintly contending against Xu Jiankong's.

The Earth Center E-Ji Banner had originally been a sect-protecting treasure of the Chan School, a magical treasure on par with immortal artifacts such as the God-Striking Whip and the Taiji Diagram. It could command the earth-elemental power of the entire land, and its might was unparalleled.

The one in Ling Fei's hand was merely an imitation, though it had been forged by a senior Kunlun expert. Naturally, its power was worlds apart from the genuine article, but it was enough for Ling Fei to draw upon the earth-elemental power within a radius of ten li and merge it into his Flying Sword's True Essence. The murderous Geng Metal Qi combined with the dense earth-elemental power, sharpness mingling with half a measure of majesty and weight—they complemented each other perfectly. If it had been the genuine original, there would have been no need to fight at all. Even if ten or a hundred Xu Jiankongs came, a single sweep of the banner would send them all back home, without the slightest suspense.

Whoosh! Two straight beams of light seemed to pierce heaven and earth, and a contest of swordsmanship transformed into a fight to the death.

Both men unleashed everything they had learned in their lives, determined to kill the other beneath a single sword strike. With the arrow already on the string, talk of either side holding back would have been a joke.

The path of cultivation lay in specialization and refinement. Ling Fei was known as the God Sword, so naturally he had put considerable effort into sword cultivation. Yet the Kunlun lineage focused primarily on Daoist arts and immortal formulas, touching upon sword cultivation only lightly. Ling Fei had chosen sword cultivation for the sake of rapid progress, but after seeing Kunlun's exquisite Daoist arts, how could he refrain from cultivating them? Thus, his studies had become somewhat miscellaneous. In swordsmanship alone, however, he fell short of Xu Jiankong's twenty years of single-minded, distractionless practice.

Facing Xu Jiankong's heaven-shaking sword strike, Ling Fei had no path other than borrowing external power.

Xu Jiankong's muscles knotted and bulged as the spiritual energy of heaven and earth continuously gathered into his body. Without changing his posture, his body slowly rose from the ground without relying on any external force, ascending toward the golden giant sword dozens of zhang overhead. The invisible black hole formed by that golden giant sword swallowed Xu Jiankong within, and man and sword fused into one, indistinguishable from each other.

The path of man and sword as one! The paths of cultivation—Buddhist, demonic, Daoist, and demonic beast—basically shared one common principle: the self came first, while magical treasures and Flying Swords were secondary. The first step was always to temper the flesh, making it incomparably powerful. Even sword cultivators since ancient times had merely used Flying Swords to communicate with the spiritual energy of heaven and earth; the Flying Sword was no more than a tool for cultivation.

Ancestor Changmei, the founding patriarch of Shu Mountain, had been a peerless genius. He had actually blended the ancient sword cultivation path with the Daoist art of Primordial Spirit grafting, creating this path of man and sword as one.

The body itself became the sword, and the sword became the body. Flying Swords were originally treasures born of heaven and earth, forged from refined steel and iron, their strength far surpassing that of human flesh. Thus, once the path of man and sword as one was mastered, one could skip the first step of cultivation: drawing in the spiritual energy of heaven and earth to strengthen the body. Now that Xu Jiankong had used it, he had already stepped across the threshold of Qi Refining and Spirit Transformation.

With the apricot-yellow banner connecting him to the earth's elemental power, Ling Fei feared not in the slightest the pressure from that enormous golden sword in the sky. The Flowing Ripple Sword's momentum changed again and again, shifting from graceful and unrestrained to heavy and majestic, then from killing intent to profound solidity. He constantly dodged and counterattacked the provocations of Xu Jiankong's momentum, now merged with the golden sword. If either side revealed the slightest flaw, the other would surely unleash a thunderous blow. The dangers within could not be described in a few words.

Just as they were locked in an irresolvable stalemate, a faint clear radiance shot down from the horizon. Though the light was tiny, the intent it contained was unprecedentedly profound and mysterious. Like a twisting silver snake, it followed some law of heaven and earth, and in an instant struck the weakest point where their opposing momentum met, forcibly separating the two.

Boom! Their momentum collided, sending dust flying from the ground. For a time, man and figure were impossible to distinguish. When the dust finally dispersed, Ling Fei had already put away his Flying Sword and magical treasures, while Xu Jiankong had returned to his original appearance. His face, however, carried a trace of exhaustion, clearly due to the depletion of vital energy from using the art of man and sword as one. Both of them stared fixedly at a young man in the middle, unfathomable in depth.

After condensing his Second Primordial Spirit, Zhou Qing had become extremely sensitive to the elemental energies of heaven and earth, able to perceive the flow of spiritual energy within a hundred li. Late at night, he had been agonizing over and analyzing the strange cultivation method he had obtained within ** that day. Zhou Qing's True Essence was now powerful, his Daoist arts profound, and he possessed an ancient demonic treasure for protection. His strength was so formidable that even the Five Grandmasters might not dare rashly test his edge. The Blood-Devouring Divine Saber's vicious reputation stood there plain as day. Unless one possessed a magical treasure of the same rank, encountering it meant certain death, losing even the right to reincarnate as a human.

Yet Zhou Qing was extremely dissatisfied. After all, it was all the cultivation of his Second Primordial Spirit; his true body had only reached the Qi Induction Stage - Mid Phase, and might not even match his two disciples, whose cultivation had advanced greatly. The true body was the righteous path, while the Second Primordial Spirit was merely a spear in his hand. Zhou Qing understood this very clearly.

How could raising the cultivation of his true body be easy? Aside from cultivating diligently and piling up time, there were roughly only two ways to rapidly increase one's cultivation: spiritual pills and miraculous medicines, or profound cultivation formulas. Yet Zhou Qing possessed neither. The Soaring Sword Qi Art cultivated quickly enough, but Zhou Qing discovered it was incomplete, containing only methods for the Qi Induction Stage and not a single word about the Primordial Spirit condensing art for the Transformation Stage. Naturally, Zhou Qing would not continue cultivating it.

After thinking it over from every angle, Zhou Qing did not even need to consider spiritual pills and miraculous medicines. Although the Refining Compendium contained pill-refining methods, the materials were beyond reach even through robbery. Many had already vanished from the world. That left only cultivation methods.

The only profound cultivation method was that unnamed formula he had obtained from **.

That unnamed formula was obscure and difficult to comprehend, while Zhou Qing was a complete novice in cultivation. He had spent several months struggling through it and only managed to understand one-tenth, so naturally he did not dare cultivate it rashly.

Just as he was trying to cultivate that unnamed formula, he was disturbed by the abnormal fluctuations of elemental energy between heaven and earth. He quietly approached to investigate, only to find two people at the Qi Induction Late Stage fighting to the death. The Flying Swords and magical treasures they wielded were also astonishingly powerful. Zhou Qing had originally intended to play the fisherman who profited from the quarrel between snipe and clam, suddenly launching a killing blow to finish them both off. After all, Zhou Qing was already thoroughly practiced at such things!