Outrageous Conditions

The other spy's voice sounded utterly unfamiliar to Han Li. He had probably never met the man, but judging by his voice, he was young, seemingly in his twenties.

Unfortunately, to be safe, Han Li had not dared sneak a look. He feared the two men's cultivation was so refined that they could sense his gaze and discover an outsider nearby. That would have been more trouble than it was worth.

After that, the rest of the journey was uneventful.

Han Li finally returned to his lodgings long after dinnertime.

As usual, Doctor Mo was not even interested enough to glance at Han Li after his mysterious return. Apart from delivering some prepared medicines from time to time, he gave Han Li free rein over everything he did.

If Han Li had not seen that the medicines Doctor Mo sent were all prepared from the precious medicinal herbs gathered on his last trip down the mountain, he would have thought the man had given up his hopes for him and was preparing some other vicious scheme.

By now, Han Li looked down on the supposedly precious medicines Doctor Mo sent him, but to avoid arousing suspicion, he still held his nose and swallowed them.

He was not afraid the medicines contained poison. Harming him now would only have been the same as harming Doctor Mo himself.

On his way back, Han Li had thought of a good way to deal with the Wild Wolf Gang spies he had encountered along the road.

Although he did not feel particularly attached to the Seven Mysteries Sect, he was still half an inner disciple. He could hardly ignore something happening right under his nose that endangered the sect.

Besides, he had long since found the perfect person to handle the matter for him: Senior Brother Li Feiyu.

From Han Li's observations, perhaps because he had taken the Marrow Extraction Pill, Li Feiyu cared far more about fame and gain than most people and had considerable ambition. He had always dreamed of joining the upper ranks of the Seven Mysteries Sect and becoming a greater focus of attention.

Han Li had once guessed that Li Feiyu probably wanted to live more wildly and gloriously in the time he had left.

Now that Han Li was personally bringing such a great opportunity to earn merit right to his door, Li Feiyu would surely be jumping for joy. It would also count as repayment for the great favor of retrieving the sword manual.

At the thought of the Blinking Sword Manual, waves of excitement surged through Han Li's heart.

He had not lied to his friend about the Blinking Sword Manual. It truly was unsuitable for Li Feiyu to practice, but Han Li had withheld quite a few details.

For him, keeping a few small secrets from everyone was the only way to survive.

Even someone who appeared to be as close to him as could be was no exception.

Still, what these manuals recorded was truly very different from ordinary martial arts.

In Han Li's view, rather than swordsmanship, it was more fitting to call it a sword technique. It was entirely a secret art of assassination that combined timing, terrain, human factors, and various other elements-a rare, pure killing technique in which the sword's emergence meant death.

The books described various techniques for killing an enemy with a single sword strike, using mysterious sword techniques honed through grueling practice in different environments and at different times.

They taught practitioners to use every blade of grass and tree in the surrounding terrain, along with the varying angles and intensities of light, to create visual illusions for their opponents, seize an enemy's weakness and see through their openings in an instant, and kill them in the blink of an eye.

It was a secret technique that placed tremendous emphasis on skill. Without at least some talent, it was impossible to comprehend and master this swordsmanship.

Therefore, anyone practicing it needed exceptional senses, with sight, hearing, and the like far surpassing those of ordinary people, before they could hope to achieve any success.

If those had been the only conditions, it would have been one thing. Some disciples would always have chosen to practice it for the sake of its power.

But, outrageously, it had an even harsher condition: anyone practicing this secret technique could not possess refined internal force. Otherwise, it would conflict with the techniques for directing force and exerting power, making cultivation exceedingly difficult.

Even if they managed to succeed by sheer luck, in actual combat their sword moves would unconsciously become distorted because their True Qi was too vigorous, leaving substantial openings for their opponents and bringing deadly disaster upon themselves.

This condition alone effectively put an end to most people's ambitions to practice it. After all, there had always been a saying in the martial world: "Practice the fist without cultivating power, and in the end it all comes to nothing."

For them, neglecting internal cultivation was an enormous taboo. To abandon their own True Qi cultivation for this obscure, inexplicable swordsmanship would have made them the laughingstock of the martial world.

That left only a precious few who still intended to practice it.

But even if those people were talented enough and had no problem with their True Qi, one final hurdle stood in their way, completely crushing any thought of pursuing it further.

That was the sword technique's excessively vast and complicated moves, and the excessively intricate and exacting conditions for applying them.

One look at the great pile of thick manuals in the bundle was enough to daunt an ordinary person.

Essentially, each sword manual represented a single sword form, and each move was further divided into hundreds of subforms. Each subform also demanded attention to the various techniques needed to execute it in different environments and under different conditions of timing.

With such a vast number of sword techniques, merely reading them would give a person a terrible headache, to say nothing of practicing them, let alone memorizing them all and then comprehending and putting them into practice.

These outrageous requirements had held back who knew how many disciples who had wished to learn the swordsmanship, leaving them cursing the elder who created this ultimate technique in their hearts.

As time passed, the Seven Mysteries Sect gradually lost interest in the swordsmanship from top to bottom. Its members believed no one could possibly master it, and that the elder had probably fabricated this set of martial arts out of thin air before his death. Otherwise, how could its cultivation requirements be so absurd? It was plainly meant to make things difficult for disciples who did not know the truth behind it. And so the manuals were shelved, and no one ever showed interest in them again.