Minor mastery of the Nine Peaks Saber, initiation into the Five-Organ Internal Refining Force

Three days later, at night.

In the small courtyard behind the Heaven Patrol Office, the well water held the summer heat at bay, and moonlight washed the gray bricks pale.

Jiang Yuexin and Yang Hui had gone to bed early.

Yi Yang had not rested. He stood in the courtyard with his hand on his saber hilt, faint damp footprints already marking the bricks beneath him.

For the past three days, he had read case files in the Archive Hall by day and returned to the courtyard to practice his saber at night.

That final hurdle in the Nine Peaks Saber was more grinding than an old ox dragging a broken cart.

He was clearly only a hair's breadth away, yet that last bit kept him stuck, making the wait agonizing as time slowly wore it down.

But Yi Yang was in no hurry. Martial training could not be rushed. After all, he had a heavenly mandate; cultivation held no hurdles or bottlenecks for him. Given enough time, he could bring any art to perfection.

He raised his hand and drew his saber beneath the moonlight.

The blade slid from its sheath, gleaming a cold white under the moon.

Yi Yang stepped forward, sinking his waist and back. His shoulders did not rise, his elbows did not drift, and his saber pushed out from beneath his ribs.

Heavy Peak.

This strike was not fast.

But as its momentum pressed outward, it cut across the night breeze in the courtyard. The locust leaves had been swaying east, only to scatter forcibly to either side midway.

The blade had not touched the leaves, yet they had already cleared its path.

Yi Yang kept his eyelids lowered.

The second strike: Perilous Peak.

The blade's path suddenly bent, changing angles midway. One instant it was directly ahead; the next, it cut in from the side.

Had anyone stood before him, they likely would not even have had time to decide which side to block.

The third strike: Sharp Peak.

Brief, clean, vicious.

The saber tip thrust out. A faint sound came as the sharp wind sliced his sleeve, and a thin ripple stretched across the water beside the well.

The fourth strike: Strange Peak.

Yi Yang's body followed the saber, every advance and retreat adhering perfectly to the method.

Retreating was not fleeing, but gathering momentum.

Advancing was not lunging, but claiming a life.

In his hands, the saber lost all flourish. All that remained was the precision, steadiness, and venom an old woodcutter honed through decades of splitting firewood.

He practiced another three times.

Small words appeared before his eyes.

[Nine Peaks Saber, Minor Accomplishment: (6000/6000)]

The next line changed accordingly.

[Nine Peaks Saber, major mastery: (0/18000)]

Yi Yang sheathed his saber and stood in the courtyard for a long while.

His heart was not racing, nor did his hands tremble.

His frame at the qi-blood fourth level, the bone tempering realm, could withstand this saber art's recoil.

Had he forced himself this far while still in the muscle training realm, his muscles and tendons would likely have cried out first.

"Finally feels natural."

Yi Yang murmured the words.

If Zhao Gang had heard that, he probably would have started cursing on the spot.

Achieving minor mastery of a superior saber art was something many patrol captains in the Heaven Patrol Office could boast about for half their lives.

From Yi Yang's mouth, it amounted to merely feeling natural.

Yi Yang went back inside and fetched the old booklet of the Wood-Nurturing Longevity Art.

Its corners had become fuzzy from repeated handling. Sweat stained its pages, which also carried the grassy, pungent smell left by medicinal baths.

He sat beneath the locust tree and read page by page.

Previously, when reading this art, he had focused only on its stances, on how to move qi and blood and nourish skin, flesh, tendons, and bones.

Now, having reached Minor Accomplishment in the Nine Peaks Saber, looking back at it gave him a different taste.

The Wood-Nurturing Longevity Art concerned nourishment.

The Nine Peaks Saber concerned killing.

One thickened qi and blood inch by inch; the other compressed qi and blood into the blade in an instant.

On the surface, they were two paths, yet their roots lay in the same place.

A strong body, abundant qi, and steady intent.

Without a strong body, the saber was an empty framework.

Without qi and blood, techniques were mere flourishes.

Without firm intent, the mind would fall into chaos before an enemy, and what one held would not be a saber, but a burial offering prepared for someone else.

Yi Yang turned to the latter half of the Wood-Nurturing Longevity Art.

A sentence was written there.

"Wood is born from earth, flourishes through qi, and thrives within the organs."

Yi Yang's finger stopped.

Previously, he had merely thought the art's author was putting on an air of profundity.

Now, that was not necessarily the case.

The Wood-Nurturing Longevity Art did more than temper the outer body.

It nourished that breath of vitality deep within the body.

Only, the art's grade was limited. Its explanation broke off here, leaving practitioners to comprehend the rest themselves.

Yi Yang laid the booklet on his knees and began circulating the Five-Organ Internal Refining Force.

This art was much harder to chew through than the Wood-Nurturing Longevity Art.

It neither coaxed nor catered to anyone.

Right from the start, it took the knife to the five organs: heart, liver, spleen, lungs, and kidneys.

All five vibrated simultaneously. A slight mistake could mean coughing blood at best, or having one's own funeral feast that very day at worst.

Yi Yang closed his eyes.

Qi and blood entered his organs.

Within his chest and abdomen, the five organs heated up in succession.

It was not heat on his skin or flesh, but heat arising from the deepest reaches of his body, crawling around the marrow and spreading through every limb and bone.

Thump, thump, thump.

The rhythms within his body gradually aligned.

A faint jade hue actually rose among his five organs.

It was not something visible from outside, but an inner radiance perceptible only through inward observation.

His heart vessels grew stronger, his lungs opened further, his liver blood became more abundant, his spleen earth grew richer, and his kidney water steadier.

The five united, producing several exceedingly fine threads of vital essence.

They traveled upward through his flesh and blood, passed along his spine into his skull, then descended to the roots of his hair.

Yi Yang suddenly felt his scalp itch.

It was not unpleasant.

It was the sort of itch that came when withered grass met spring, and fresh shoots pushed out of the soil.

A quarter of an hour later, his five organs settled.

Yi Yang opened his eyes, and small words appeared before him.

[Five-Organ Internal Refining Force, Minor Accomplishment: (0/15000)]

He did not rush to check his progress. Instead, as though sensing a change in himself,

he picked up the copper basin beside the well, filled it to the brim with water, and looked into it.

The water trembled, reflecting an old face.

The wrinkles remained, as did the white hair, but several strands actually showed traces of black at their tips.

The black had not spread upward, so his hair still looked white.

Yet the sign of a withered tree greeting spring was unmistakably real.

Yi Yang stared at the water for a long while before swearing.

"This art is a little ridiculous."

Ordinary martial artists replenished themselves with meat, medicinal powders, and mutant beast flesh and blood.

They ate it, then refined it into qi and blood.

But the Five-Organ Internal Refining Force was different.

It absorbed the essence drifting between heaven and earth, drawing it first into the five organs, which then nourished the flesh in turn.

This effectively opened another channel for strengthening the body, and this method of nourishing the flesh left neither pill toxins nor impurities.

Yi Yang suddenly understood why the County Commandant had watched it so closely.

If the Five-Organ Internal Refining Force got out, not only the County Commandant but every great clan and gang in Yunlin County would turn green with envy.

It was more than an internal refining method.

It let people touch the edge of "qi" ahead of time.

Yi Yang spread open the Wood-Nurturing Longevity Art again and compared it with the circulation of the Five-Organ Internal Refining Force just now.

The nourishment of wood lay not in skin and flesh.

It lay in vitality.

Wood qi hid within the five organs, traveling through blood and standing upon bone.

The qi-blood realm cultivated the body, but the body itself had an inside and an outside.

The outer body consisted of skin, flesh, tendons, and bones; the inner body, organs and vital essence.

Those with strong outer bodies could withstand every sort of grueling training and tempering.

Those with strong Inner Energy could live longer and travel farther.

Only when both inside and outside set off together would the path truly be steady.

The more Yi Yang read, the more flavor he found in it.

He assumed the Yi Wood Longevity Stance described in the booklet once more.

This time, standing in it felt different.

As his breath settled, the locust leaves in the courtyard stirred faintly.

An exceedingly faint green tinge rose in the air.

It had no form.

Nor could it be touched.

Yet Yi Yang sensed it nonetheless.

It was a wisp of exceedingly insubstantial pure yi wood qi.

Far away at the edge of the sky, yet close within his chest and abdomen.

It hovered at the edge of his perception, like a mountain seen through gauze. The mountain remained in the mist, but its outline had begun to emerge.

Yi Yang tightened his hands.

This was something only experts at the perfection of the inner qi realm or above should have been able to touch. According to what Yi Yang had learned from the texts, the inner qi realm existed precisely to glimpse the presence of "qi." Yet now, at only the qi-blood fourth level, he could already glimpse "qi," putting him a whole major realm ahead.

Those young grandmasters of renowned sects usually only dared claim they had glimpsed the threshold of qi in the late stages of the qi-blood sixth level, or even when nearing perfection in marrow washing and blood renewal.

And him?

The qi-blood fourth level.

The bone tempering realm.

He had already touched the shadow of pure yi wood qi.

"County Commandant, oh, County Commandant."

Yi Yang softly breathed out the words.

"I'll gladly accept your generous gift."

Had this art truly fallen into the County Commandant's hands, and had he been given a few peaceful years to practice, the Yunlin County government might well have gained another old wolf wearing an official's skin.

Yi Yang flexed his wrists.

His joints gave a series of fine cracks. A bone tempering realm frame, Minor Accomplishment in the Nine Peaks Saber, and now initiation into the Five-Organ Internal Refining Force.

If he encountered an ordinary practitioner at the qi-blood fifth level, the organ refining realm, he might not win cleanly.

But exchanging a few moves, finding a chance to carve off flesh, or even trading his life to kill-

he could give it a try.

Of course, it would be best not to try at all.

This old man had survived this long not by having an iron head, but by circling around pits when he saw them and walking away from trouble.

Yi Yang tucked the sheepskin scroll into the pouch he wore close to his body, then wrapped it in three layers of oilcloth.

This thing could not be exposed.

Not the slightest whisper could escape.

He could not tell the Heaven Patrol Office, nor could he tell Zhao Gang.

He could not reveal it to Jiang Yuexin or Yang Hui either. After all, even the slightest rumor could bring a disaster that cost them their heads.

Many calamities in this world came not because others lacked humanity, but because you served meat right up to a wolf's mouth, then asked whether it ate vegetarian.

Yi Yang sat down again, picked up his tea bowl, and took a sip of cold tea.

The tea was bitter enough to numb the root of his tongue, yet he found it soothing.

People all said great grandmasters had displayed astonishing talent in their youth, perfecting qi and blood in their teens to glimpse the threshold of "qi," then perfecting Inner Energy at twenty to pursue true "qi."

Yi Yang measured himself against them and suddenly found the matter rather curious.

He had caught sight of qi even faster, glimpsing "the threshold of qi" after less than half a year of cultivation.

But he also knew this did not mean his talent truly surpassed every monstrous genius under heaven.

Those from prestigious sects had internal refining methods too, some even more profound.

It was just that such methods demanded too much natural talent and were far too picky about innate constitution.

By the time they mastered the basics of their internal refining methods, precious medicines, mutant beast meat, and guidance from renowned masters had usually already piled their cultivation up to the pinnacle of the Qi-Blood Realm.

For those people, the barriers of the Qi-Blood Realm stood half as high from birth.

Yi Yang was different. He was an old woodcutter who had only gained his cheat at sixty.

Without [Old Steed in the Stable, Aspiring to a Thousand Miles] multiplying the fruits of every grueling cultivation session sixtyfold, he could never have forced his Five-Organ Internal Refining Force to the entry level while still at the qi-blood fourth level.

Yi Yang set down his teacup and looked up at the night beyond the courtyard wall.

A night watchman struck his clapper in the direction of the Heaven Patrol Office's inner courtyard.

After the clapper sounded, a breeze blew in from the mouth of the alley, carrying the lingering aromas of the town's taverns, along with a faint herbal scent from the apothecaries.

Yi Yang felt the few black strands at the ends of his hair and suddenly laughed, cursing.

"Sixty years old, and turning young again."

"If word of this gets out, every old master in the county will probably come asking to borrow my hair-washing water."