Ghost?

Duan Yun rested for a while, then dug a pit beneath the crooked tree in the small courtyard and buried the corpse of the Black Bear Gang man called Wang Li.

After finishing all that, dawn had yet to break. Duan Yun was exhausted and sleepy, and he wanted to sleep.

So he slept.

In the morning, Duan Yun woke up, took a cold shower, and changed into a clean pair of underwear.

Last night had been his first time killing someone and burying a corpse. He had thought he would have nightmares.

Instead, he had a spring dream.

And it had been with his beloved two-dimensional wife from his previous life.

He had transmigrated and was still into anime girls. How embarrassing.

Afterward, Duan Yun ate breakfast and prepared to flee.

That palm strike he had taken last night had been heavy. He had thought it would leave him with broken bones and internal injuries, but his recovery was faster than expected.

Other than a faint ache in his arm, the rest of him was no longer seriously affected.

It seemed to be thanks to the Jade Sword True Qi and his unusually gifted bones.

Duan Yun carried only silver, manuals, a kitchen knife, and some close-fitting clothes.

The clothes and kitchen knife were packed in a medicine chest, making him look like a doctor heading out on a house call.

As he left, he wrapped a strand of hair around the door lock.

Now that he had the silver dropped by the dead man, Duan Yun had a budget for buying a sword.

The kitchen knife had still somewhat hindered the power of his Sword Qi last night.

A swordsmanship genius using a kitchen knife to slash out Sword Qi was not only unhandsome, but its power would also be discounted.

So Duan Yun planned to visit a weapon shop first and buy a sword for protection.

As he walked down the road, Duan Yun kept his eyes on all four directions and his ears tuned to all eight sides.

A few days ago, he had heard that the Black Bear Gang had begun fighting an organization called the Ironblood Sect. Supposedly, the blood in the bodies of Ironblood Sect experts was all green.

What he hoped for most now was for the Black Bear Gang and Ironblood Sect to beat each other's brains into dog-brain splatter. That way, the Black Bear Gang probably would not have much energy left to hunt him down.

But when he went to buy a sword, he learned that the Ironblood Sect had left.

Duan Yun asked in surprise, "Why did they leave?"

"The more Ironblood Sect people cultivate, the more blood they have. Every year, there are inevitably some days when they get pent-up and want to find someone to fight so they can let some blood. Once they've let out enough blood, naturally they leave," the weapon shop owner explained.

Duan Yun was speechless. "Isn't that giving up halfway a little too easily?"

The Ironblood Sect had already gone, and Riverside City was still under the Black Bear Gang's control.

Duan Yun sensed the danger and ultimately bought a sword for thirteen taels of silver.

It was a longsword with an utterly ordinary design and utterly ordinary workmanship.

It differed from what he had imagined.

At first, he had wanted a sword that felt right in the hand, was durable, and preferably had just a little style.

Later, he stopped caring whether it looked stylish. It only needed to feel right in the hand and be durable.

Later still, he stopped caring whether it felt right in the hand. As long as it was durable and a sword, that would do.

It felt rather like going to a bathhouse with too little budget, only to end up ordering the cheapest package and being unable to afford even an extra session.

There was no other reason. Swords were damn expensive.

No wonder most of the people wielding swords in the martial world were graceful young masters.

Poor bastards could not afford swords.

After buying the sword, Duan Yun bought several flatbreads and left the city.

On the way, he ran into a group from the Black Bear Gang eating noodles by the roadside, which gave him quite a fright.

After leaving the city, Duan Yun turned back for one last look at Waterside City.

It was just morning. Smoke curled from every household's cooking fires, mist drifted over the river beside the city, and Duan Yun keenly felt the bitterness of having a home he could not return to.

He was not one to hold grudges, but he would remember this feeling. Once his swordsmanship reached great mastery, he would make everyone in the Black Bear Gang repay it double.

Riverside City was relatively isolated, and there were not many people even on the main road outside the city, much less on the side path Duan Yun had chosen.

The side path was hidden enough, but as Duan Yun walked, he realized he had taken a wrong turn.

He had originally intended to hide from trouble in Qingsong Market, seventy li from Riverside City. Once his swordsmanship was complete, it would also make it convenient for him to travel there and back within a day and wipe out the Black Bear Gang's entire household.

But now, the sky was fully dark, and he still had not found a place to stay.

That night, Duan Yun lit a fire in the wilderness.

He warmed the dry, cold flatbreads over it for a while, then swallowed them down with water from his gourd.

It was not that he had not considered hunting some game. Not far away lay a wild chicken he had felled with Sword Qi.

But there was no stream here, and it would not be easy to clean a bloody chicken properly. He might as well just eat flatbreads.

It seemed he was destined to sleep in the wilderness tonight.

In television dramas, swordsmen sleeping in the wild looked rather romantic. They lit a fire to keep warm, and whenever they encountered injustice, Sword Qi crisscrossed the skies.

But all Duan Yun could feel at that moment was loneliness and desolation, with even a faint thread of fear.

On the way here, he had seen quite a few broken gravestones in the wild forest ahead.

Though there was a road here, it ran beside graves. The wind blew, the trees swayed, and the occasional cry of a night owl rang out. It was a living, breathing horror movie set.

Yes, he did not even know where this road led, and he had not encountered so much as half a human shadow anywhere before or behind him.

No matter what, this was not the kind of place where one could sleep at ease.

So Duan Yun could only practice.

Duan Yun opened the manual and read it by the firelight, his expression focused.

Whenever he began practicing swordsmanship, no matter how great his worries had been beforehand, he could always quickly calm down and immerse himself in it.

Today, he wanted to try the third move of the Jade Sword True Canon.

The third move of the Jade Sword True Canon was called "Jade Sword Finger," and it was plainly a finger technique.

At that moment, Duan Yun lowered his left arm, extended his index finger, and circulated the Jade Sword True Qi according to the method described in the manual.

His index finger was stretched ramrod straight, looking powerful and forceful, like a divine sword drawn from its sheath.

The next moment, he jabbed forward with his Sword Finger. Nothing happened.

Duan Yun jabbed again. Still nothing.

By all rights, Jade Sword Finger and Water-Moon Slash were similar moves. Both expelled the Jade Sword True Qi within his body through fixed acupoints.

Before his third attempt, Duan Yun shook out his finger and steadied his emotions.

He sank his Qi into his dantian. The Jade Sword True Qi flowed in sequence through acupoints such as "Arm Five Miles," "Outer Yang," and "Shang Yang," then he thrust forward!

A streak of white light shot from his fingertip.

With a bang, the white light pierced through the ground, leaving behind a tiny hole whose bottom could not be seen.

Duan Yun raised his hand and sent another strike forward!

With a bang, the white Sword Qi pierced through a wild tree ahead, splintered wood flying everywhere.

Duan Yun walked over to look. The tree was not large, but it was still half a foot thick. Yet it had been effortlessly pierced through.

"Why does this look so much like the Duan Clan's Six Meridian Divine Sword?" Duan Yun muttered as he pondered the sight.

After watching the television drama Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils in his previous life, Duan Yun had acquired several lofty life goals at a young age.

Marry Liu Yifei.

Marry Jiang Xin.

Master the Duan Clan's ultimate art, the Six Meridian Divine Sword.

After growing up, the first two comparatively easy goals had been canceled because he fell in love with his two-dimensional wife, while the third had simply been abandoned.

Who would have thought that through this bizarre twist of fate, he would achieve the most difficult goal instead?

It seemed Duan Clan members truly received a bonus when cultivating finger techniques.

Duan Yun used Jade Sword Finger twice more in succession. Watching the wild tree get effortlessly pierced through gave him the exhilarating feeling of playing a shooting game.

Now, his left hand could use Jade Sword Finger to pierce enemies through, while his right could use Water-Moon Slash for wide-area killing. Combined, the two had formidable power.

The day he wiped out the Black Bear Gang was just around the corner!

Yes, what he lacked now was the depth of his True Qi.

When he had been attacked last night, slashing out four Moonlit Water Sword Qi strikes in succession had nearly consumed half his True Qi. There were so many people in the Black Bear Gang that he would need to be able to unleash at least a hundred Moonlit Water Sword Qi strikes and thrust out a hundred Jade Sword Fingers in succession before he could kill to his heart's content.

His Jade Sword True Qi had grown from nothing into a trickling stream. At present, he could use around ten Moonlit Water Sword Qi strikes or twenty Jade Sword Fingers in a row.

That had taken nearly ten days. To increase it tenfold, he would need a hundred days.

Still too slow. He had to step things up.

Duan Yun decided that once he found somewhere to settle down, he would have to practice the Jade Sword Stance even more diligently to cultivate his Jade Sword True Qi.

Once his True Qi was abundant, he would definitely pierce every Black Bear Gang member through, one finger at a time. Whenever there were too many people, he would simply use Moonlit Water Sword Qi to slaughter them over a wide area.

Mm, just thinking about it made him feel excited and vindicated.

Now that Jade Sword Finger had been mastered, only the final move of the Jade Sword True Canon remained: "Grasp Sparrow's Tail."

By convention, the final move in a manual ought to be the strongest.

After using Jade Sword Finger repeatedly, Duan Yun had consumed nearly half the Jade Sword True Qi in his body, and his arm felt somewhat sore, as if he had thrust too many times.

But he had experience. As long as the intensity and frequency increased, his arm would gradually adapt to that intensity.

To put it bluntly, he just lacked exercise. More thrusting would do.

Thus, without stopping for even a moment, Duan Yun began practicing the final move, Grasp Sparrow's Tail.

Duan Yun carefully studied the manual and discovered that Grasp Sparrow's Tail was indeed the most complicated of the four moves.

While circulating True Qi and forming finger seals, he also needed to visualize the Dharma Aspect diagram of the Jade Sword Immortal.

The Jade Sword Immortal Dharma Aspect in the manual was sketched with sparse strokes and lacked detail, but it still captured the spirit. It appeared to be the image of a female Sword Immortal with an air of transcendence.

Duan Yun quickly memorized it.

He was a swordsmanship prodigy. Memorizing the Dharma Aspect of a Jade Sword Immortal was easy.

Under the moonlight, Duan Yun crossed his hands and formed a finger seal. The image of the Jade Sword Immortal immediately surfaced in his sea of consciousness, like a lotus rising from the water.

"Grasp Sparrow's Tail!"

In an instant, Jade Sword True Qi like Lunar Essence scattered out from Duan Yun's body, forming a vague Jade Sword Immortal Dharma Aspect behind him.

Duan Yun changed his finger seals, but the Jade Sword Immortal Dharma Aspect behind him remained unmoving as a mountain.

By rights, the Jade Sword Immortal Dharma Aspect should have changed its finger seals along with him.

Duan Yun tried several times, but the Dharma Aspect refused to give him any face.

"Huuuh..."

Duan Yun let out a long breath, and the Dharma Aspect behind him dispersed.

Condensing that Dharma Aspect consumed a considerable amount of True Qi.

"This time, it should be the manual's problem too, not mine," Duan Yun thought.

The one-in-ten-thousand swordsmanship genius had encountered another obstacle with the fourth move, Grasp Sparrow's Tail, but Duan Yun was not anxious.

His previous experience had already told him that with his swordsmanship talent and supreme wisdom, he should be able to solve this problem very soon.

Besides, merely mastering the first three moves would be enough for him to settle accounts with the Black Bear Gang.

Duan Yun practiced the Jade Sword Stance for another half hour. Only when the moon vanished behind the clouds did he end today's training.

He had spent the day fleeing and practicing swordsmanship. He was quite tired.

After adding more firewood, Duan Yun sat down with his back against a tree, intending to doze for a while.

But he did not sleep peacefully. Every so often, he angrily slapped himself across the face, or even slashed out a streak of Sword Qi.

The mosquitoes were too vicious.

This was his first time sleeping outdoors, yet he felt none of the carefree ease or starlit romance from martial arts television dramas.

In a haze, Duan Yun fell asleep, even hearing illusory buzzing in his ears.

At that moment, a gust of cold wind blew over, making the already weak flames sway left and right.

Goosebumps rose all over Duan Yun. He reached up to wrap his clothes more tightly around himself, but then his body suddenly froze.

The flickering firelight illuminated a portion of the muddy slope below.

A woman in red stood there.

She was by the grave mounds Duan Yun had passed earlier.

The woman in red stood at the edge of that wild forest. In the dim surroundings, he could not make out her face, but Duan Yun felt that she had been staring at him all along.

A hair-raising chill crawled over Duan Yun's entire body.

A ghost?