At the edge of the shimmering Peaceful Lake.
Ding Songyan sat cross-legged on a gray-white rock. Before him, illusory figures practiced all manner of martial arts.
Some held swords, others sabers or hammers, and still others oddly shaped weapons. They slashed, cleaved, smashed, swept upward, flicked, sliced, pared, stuck, drew, thrust, and parted, reducing complex techniques to simple movements.
The illusory figures and their different martial arts, distilled from complexity to simplicity, gradually overlapped, as though about to coalesce into one and reveal their true form.
They were all manifestations within Ding Songyan's mind.
After an indeterminate stretch of time, the scabbard across Ding Songyan's knees suddenly rang out. Cold Shadow sprang free, and he grasped it, thrusting toward the countless illusory figures.
The thrust was extraordinarily slow. The sword tip trembled constantly, seeming to contain myriad variations.
At last, Cold Shadow landed amid the eighteen kinds of weapons-sabers, spears, swords, halberds-and struck the right wrist of the increasingly overlapping illusory figures.
In an instant, every technique and every phantom vanished like smoke and clouds.
"Whew..." Ding Songyan slowly exhaled.
His Embracing All Rivers and Ten Thousand Laws Return to One had finally taken embryonic shape.
Although they were still limited to the martial arts collected by the Xiaoming Sect and had yet to encompass special circumstances such as flight, burrowing underground, or entering and leaving the Netherworld, he had at least taken the first step. He would need to see and experience more, continually revising his work or even overturning it entirely and starting afresh, again and again.
And if he could bring this to minor completion, it would become a general treatise on martial arts that would astound the world.
Ding Songyan felt that the time required would likely have to be measured in decades. As for full