Gu Chengming opened his eyes.
The ceiling of the little courtyard on the back mountain swam into view. Outside the window, the osmanthus branches rustled in the morning breeze. Everything was calm and peaceful — except for the phantom ache in his pelvis.
The Hundred Emperor's enthusiasm really was more than a mortal frame could bear.
Thankfully, nothing that happened inside Love's Hundred Bones Resonance's room carried over into actual physical injury, or he'd be lying in the Wenjian Sect infirmary right now — with a diagnosis in the cause-of-illness column that would leave every healer in the hall staring at one another.
— "Pelvic fracture. Sustained while being intimate with his own cultivation technique."
Just picturing that, Gu Chengming decided he'd never be able to show his face in the cultivation world again.
He sat up slowly and cycled Zhouli's Heaven-Human Heart-Rectifying Method once through. Vast, upright qi flowed through him, and the phantom pain drained away.
Just residual sensory memory, then. Not real damage.
Gu Chengming let out a breath and opened the system panel.
[Hundred Bones Resonance favorability: 610/Unto Death, Unwavering]
The afterglow of the CG still lingered in the corner of the panel. A silver-moon plain. A white-haired girl. That utterly unreserved embrace, and —
Never mind. No more remembering. His pelvis was starting to hurt again.
Gu Chengming shut the CG down without hesitation and, out of habit, ran a check on his own condition. Meridians circulating smoothly. Hundred Bones Resonance's blood-and-qi reinforcement as steady as ever…
But at the bottom of the technique status column there was now a small icon. If he hadn't happened to be going through his status line by line, he'd never have noticed it at all.
He tapped it. The information that popped up was a single short line, with no further explanation whatsoever.
[???: …]
White background, red-gold trim. Exactly the same style as Love's Hundred Bones Resonance.
Gu Chengming fell into thought, his mind racing back over the final moments of the battle at the Royal Court…
He suspected Love's Hundred Bones Resonance still existed somewhere. But there was simply too little to go on, and staring at three question marks until his eyes crossed wasn't going to conjure an answer out of thin air.
[Hundred Bones Resonance seemed to notice something off about him, and asked, puzzled: Heavenly Emperor Gu? What's wrong?]
"Nothing."
Gu Chengming put the panel away. Confirmation would take time, he guessed. Better to deal with what was in front of him first.
He stood and pushed the window open.
Morning light spilled into the little courtyard, and the clean fragrance of osmanthus washed over him.
The trip to the Yunyue Sect needed to go on the schedule.
"The Yunyue Sect, hm…"
Ren Wencai sat at the stone table in the side courtyard with a teacup in hand, his brows knotted into a thoroughly classic arrangement of elderly worry.
Gu Chengming laid out everything he'd pieced together: the Yunyue Sect and the Hunyuan Sect both absent from the Grand Tournament, the sharp drop in rogue cultivators across the Emerald Screen Range, the Flowing Cloud, Moon-Following Sword Art having been tampered with by someone.
He did trim a few things, of course — the Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign, and what lay at the very bottom of the Secret Realm. Some matters reached too far to be explained over a single cup of tea.
Ren Wencai heard him out, then was quiet a moment.
"So what you're saying is, you want to feel out the Hunyuan Sect first?"
Gu Chengming nodded. "Going straight to the Yunyue Sect is too risky. I've got almost nothing on them… but the Hunyuan Sect, on the other hand—"
"You want to use the Hunyuan Sect as a springboard. Get a rough picture of the Emerald Screen Range first, then decide how to get into the Yunyue Sect," Ren Wencai said, cutting straight to it.
He had to admit, his disciple's head worked well. No reckless charging in. He knew to ask around before he swung.
Better than Ren Wencai himself had been at that age. It had taken a good many beatings before he learned to move carefully.
"As it happens, I do know a few people over at the Hunyuan Sect." Ren Wencai set down his cup, his expression easing. "I'll write them a letter and have them smooth the way for you. At the very least nobody will stop you at the gate."
"Thank you, Master."
"What's there to thank me for? You're not an outsider."
Ren Wencai waved a hand. And then, just as Gu Chengming assumed that was that and started to rise and take his leave—
Something seemed to occur to the old man, and the look he turned on Gu Chengming grew rather delicate.
"Chengming." There was a probing note in his voice. "That Immortal-Concealing Wine-Sword Formula — have you been cultivating it?"
Gu Chengming's face went awkward.
That manual had been pressed into his hands ages ago by the venerable Hua Daiyi of the Hunyuan Sect. Its whole premise was nourishing sword qi with wine qi — the body drunk, the intent sober. Among Fourth Realm sword arts it counted as a top-tier inheritance.
Hua Daiyi had even swallowed his pride to claim the title of "half-master" over him for it, and had genuinely deflected no small amount of trouble on Gu Chengming's behalf, open and hidden alike.
Which made it all the more shameful that Gu Chengming still hadn't so much as reached the entry level.
The reasons weren't complicated. At first his attributes were too low; he simply didn't meet the cultivation requirements.
Later, once his attributes caught up, he had a pile of new techniques on hand. Hundred Bones Resonance hit harder every fight, the Huiyuan Sword Formula flowed more smoothly every time he drew it, and there was no urgent gap in his sword work that needed patching.
Add to that one crisis after another — the Capital, then the Northern Territory, then Tianque, then Floating Isle City — with never a quiet stretch to sit down and cultivate, and the sword art naturally got shelved.
And shelved it had stayed. Right up until now.
To put it unkindly, the Immortal-Concealing Wine-Sword Formula had probably spent longer gathering dust in his storage pouch than he had spent cultivating in the Wenjian Sect altogether.
"…Not yet at entry level," Gu Chengming admitted, a little embarrassed.
Ren Wencai sighed, wearing the face of a man who had seen this coming.
Once upon a time he'd worried the boy would steal techniques he wasn't meant to have. Now he was praying the boy would hurry up and learn one.
He ran the ledger in his head. Hua Daiyi, that old drunkard, might conduct himself like a madman, but when he took someone under his wing he meant it.
Back then, how many people had wanted to trip Gu Chengming up — openly, covertly, from inside the sect and from among the outer rogue cultivators? Hua Daiyi had shoved every one of them back down, and the only reason he'd bothered was that Gu Chengming had accepted his manual, which in the old man's mind made the boy half his own disciple.
And on this trip to the Hunyuan Sect, nine times out of ten the two of them would run into each other.
At which point the old drunkard would grab Gu Chengming with delight and say, "Come, come, let this old man see how far you've taken the Immortal-Concealing Wine-Sword Formula" — and discover the boy hadn't practiced it at all—
"Chengming." Ren Wencai cleared his throat and did his best to sound as though he had nothing to feel guilty about. "This Immortal-Concealing Wine-Sword Formula, you know. It really is a fine technique."
His expression was intensely earnest, like a man hawking a product he knew perfectly well he was partly responsible for.
"It's the fruit of Hua Daiyi's whole life of insight. They say he even drew its essence from the reflections of some great cultivator. Among Fourth Realm sword arts it is absolutely first-rate."
"In any case… before you set out for the Hunyuan Sect, at least turn a couple of pages. Enough that when the old drunkard asks, you can hold up your end of the conversation."
Watching his master do his level best to talk him into it, Gu Chengming felt rather strange about the whole thing.
Thinking it over, he really had done Senior Hua Daiyi a disservice.
"This disciple understands. I'll begin studying it as soon as I'm back."
Ren Wencai let out a relieved breath at that.
…
Having taken his leave of Ren Wencai, Gu Chengming returned to the little courtyard.
He sat down at the stone table and dug the Immortal-Concealing Wine-Sword Formula out of his storage pouch.
[The Huiyuan Sword Formula said with a little hmph: Chengming, go ahead and cultivate this sword art. I don't mind.]
In the old days, the moment Gu Chengming so much as hinted at studying another sword art, Little Huiyuan would have spiraled straight into insecurity—
What if he likes the new one better? What if he throws me away? What if the new arrival is more favored than me?
But ever since the Love Huiyuan Sword Formula had been unlocked, Little Huiyuan's whole style had undergone a fundamental transformation.
It was the Love Huiyuan Sword Formula. Gu Chengming's alone. The only one of its kind in all the world.
However strong other sword arts were, they were still just other sword arts.
[The Huiyuan Sword Formula went on: Once it reaches entry level, I'll take charge of educating it properly for you.]
See that? The composure of a principal wife.
Gu Chengming found that both gratifying and a little funny. He spread the Immortal-Concealing Wine-Sword Formula open on the table and began quietly working out his technique loadout for the road ahead.
Ever since coming back from Floating Isle City, one question had been nagging at him.
Gu Chengming — aren't you leaning on Super Hundred Bones Resonance just a bit too much?
It wasn't that Hundred Bones Resonance was bad. Quite the opposite. Hundred Bones Resonance was too good. Good to the point of being nearly all-purpose.
Body refinement, it had. Defense, it had. Close-quarters damage, it had. And its ultimate — "Hundred Emperor, aid me" — could put out absurd, punching-far-above-your-weight damage at the critical moment. Now it had even added a broken skill like Infinite Love.
And that was exactly the problem. Where cultivation techniques were concerned, he relied on Hundred Bones Resonance for far too much.
The tournament had driven that home. The moment Hundred Bones Resonance was stripped out on its own, his offensive options were cut in half.
What if something like that happened in reality? Some art specifically designed to counter body-refinement techniques. Some ward capable of temporarily sealing off Hundred Bones Resonance's blood-and-qi circulation—
Wouldn't Gu Chengming instantly degrade from "Super Gu Chengming" into "an ordinary Third Realm cultivator who can merely fight above his level against the Fourth Realm"?
That risk was too large. Which meant he needed a pure offensive option that stood entirely outside the Hundred Bones Resonance system.
Something strong enough, independent enough, that even with Hundred Bones Resonance disabled he'd still have the means to fight. A… sword art?
Gu Chengming looked down at the Immortal-Concealing Wine-Sword Formula lying open on the table and tapped one line of its verses lightly with a fingertip.
"Wine qi nourishes sword qi. The body drunk, the intent sober…"
No question about it. This technique he'd wanted for so long, and finally met the attribute requirements for, was the perfect supplement to his arsenal.
In the days that followed, Gu Chengming lived, for once, the life a proper cultivator was supposed to live.
Training at dawn, contemplation in the afternoon, meditation at nightfall. Three fixed points, plain and unadorned and thoroughly dull — as though he'd gone back to the very beginning.
In that rare stretch of peace, his cultivation climbed steadily…
All the way to the eighth layer of the Third Realm, as naturally as water flowing downhill.
Gu Chengming opened his eyes, felt the ever-thicker foundation of spiritual power inside him, and was quite satisfied.
The baseline of the eighth layer of the Third Realm was plenty to support his movements at the Hunyuan Sect and the Yunyue Sect. The ninth layer beyond it, and the breakthrough to the Fourth Realm, couldn't be rushed — that would take the Blood-Burning Realm-Breaking Pearl for one final push, and now was not the time.
There was something more urgent in front of him.
— The Immortal-Concealing Wine-Sword Formula.
Before he set out for the Hunyuan Sect, he had to get it to entry level, one way or another.
Reaching entry level, however, turned out to be far harder than he'd imagined…
It was a top-tier Fourth Realm technique, after all, and no matter how he worked at it, he couldn't find the knack.
"Wine qi nourishes sword qi. The body drunk, the intent sober…"
Wine qi nourishes sword qi… so didn't that mean he needed wine qi first?
The moment that occurred to him, he fished an ordinary jar of spirit wine out of his storage pouch — something he'd picked up casually in a market street — tipped his head back and took a swallow.
The wine went down his throat, and a warm current of wine qi spread along his gullet toward his dantian.
And then—
[Ding! Rebirth Vengeance System - Side Quest updated!]
[Side Quest: Manifesting Sagehood Before the Crowd - Sword Dao Chapter]
[Description: The host has awakened an entirely new sword dao inheritance. But an inheritance never displayed to the world is a pearl gathering dust, fine brocade worn in the dark — a criminal waste of heaven's gifts!]
[Requirement: Before a gathering of ten or more people, display a shocking level of sword dao attainment using the Immortal-Concealing Wine-Sword Formula.]
— There you go again.
Gu Chengming sighed. And then, on second thought, something clicked.
For this to fire the instant he finished drinking — was there a chance it was hinting that his theory was right? That before cultivating this sword art, he had to get drunk first?
That gave him something to chew on.
Which meant the first order of business was tracking down a couple of jars of genuinely good wine.
The spirit wine he'd bought at the market was far too low a grade — its wine qi as thin as plain water, its cultivation efficiency laughable. At this rate he could drink until the end of time and still not reach entry level before departure.
He needed real wine.
"Wine?"
Shen Qianqiu set down his teacup and gave Gu Chengming a distinctly odd look.
Gu Chengming briefly explained that the Immortal-Concealing Wine-Sword Formula required wine qi to reach entry level.
Shen Qianqiu understood well enough once he'd heard it out. But understanding was one thing — the man himself was a sword cultivator who never touched a drop, and you couldn't have found so much as a jar of fermented rice mash in his residence.
"I genuinely don't have any," Shen Qianqiu said, then offered, "Go ask Wencai. He drank for a few years in his youth. He might still have something stashed away."
Gu Chengming went to Ren Wencai as suggested, and Ren Wencai was even blunter than Shen Qianqiu.
"Wine? I quit long ago." The old man was righteous about it. "I gave it up back then because I nearly botched a duel while drunk. Haven't touched a mouthful since."
He paused, then added, "Besides, good wine is hard to come by. The mass-market stuff those spirit wine shops in the sect sell almost certainly isn't up to the standard your technique needs. You want the real immortal brew — aged long enough, spiritually rich enough, made with proper yeast."
"And there probably aren't more than a few jars of that in the entire Wenjian Sect."
That left Gu Chengming stuck. He could hardly make a special trip out to the market streets just to hunt down good wine for the sake of one sword art's entry level — never mind whether he'd find any, the round trip alone would cost more time than he could spare.
He mentally ran through the whole Wenjian Sect, top to bottom. The elders with a taste for drink could be counted on one hand, and those who actually kept aged immortal brew were rarer still.
He even briefly considered going to the Sect Head about it — but troubling the Sect Head over a jar of wine, if word got out, would look rather unseemly.
He was on the verge of settling for second best and grinding away with the low-grade spirit wine when—
The gate of the little back-mountain courtyard swung open.
Yu Wenqiu stood in the doorway with a green-glazed porcelain wine jar in her arms that looked to have some years on it.
The jar wasn't large — about two fists' worth — but the spirit wax sealing its mouth had darkened to a deep amber, and even from the doorway a faint, exquisitely clean fragrance of wine had already begun drifting over.
It wasn't a heavy scent, nor a cloying one, but it carried an extraordinarily long finish, as though someone had sealed an autumn night's moonlight inside the jar, so that opening it would let out the smell of an entire autumn.
One breath was enough for Gu Chengming to know this was no ordinary vintage.
Yu Wenqiu set the jar down lightly on the stone table and brushed the dust off its lid, her tone as casual as if she were handing over a packet of pastries bought at a roadside stall.
"Heard you were looking for good wine?"
"Elder, your information network is impressive."
"The Sect Head told me," Yu Wenqiu said, as though it were the most natural thing in the world.
Gu Chengming looked at the green porcelain jar, then at Yu Wenqiu, and hesitated.
"This wine looks like it's been aged a good while. How does Elder Yu come to be sitting on an immortal brew like this?"
He was genuinely curious. He knew Yu Wenqiu's hobbies far too well — storybooks, pastries, and the occasional skipped shift. Those three covered essentially the whole of her extracurricular life.
Drinking? He'd never once seen it.
"This is…"
Yu Wenqiu cleared her throat and let her gaze drift toward the osmanthus tree in the yard, trying to wave the topic past with an air of studied nonchalance.
"Dowry. From the elders back home."
"…?"
A question mark practically materialized above Gu Chengming's head.
Seeing it, Yu Wenqiu's face went redder still, and her tone, overshooting embarrassment entirely, came out downright fierce.
"What? My family elders said good wine deserves a good man. When I marry someday, I'm to break the seal on the wedding night and drink it with my husband. What's so shocking about that?"
"Would it be improper for me to drink it now?" Gu Chengming thought privately that this was supposed to be saved for the wedding.
"I told you to drink it, so drink it." Yu Wenqiu rolled her eyes at him, thoroughly out of sorts. "It's only gathering dust at my place anyway."
She gave a huff and turned to go.
At the gate she stopped short, twisted her head around, and added, "I've already handed it over, so consider the wedding night booked. No backing out!"
Gu Chengming sat at the stone table for a long while afterward, looking down at the green porcelain jar that had been carefully sealed away for who knew how many years. There was a faint pale-pink imprint on its side where a silk ribbon had been — decoration Yu Wenqiu had presumably tied on herself and then removed before bringing it over.
Elder Little Yu might say it was only gathering dust at her place, but this jar had obviously been kept with great care.
He let out a quiet sigh, tucked away the feeling he didn't quite know where to put, and then, with all due seriousness, peeled the spirit wax from the mouth of the jar.
Business came first. Wasting good wine would be the real waste of her feelings.
…
Good wine was good wine. The grade of Yu Wenqiu's dowry brew far exceeded Gu Chengming's expectations — one small mouthful, and the wine qi came pouring into his meridians like the Milky Way upended.
For the first time, Gu Chengming knew what it was to be drunk.
A cultivator's constitution surpassed a mortal's, true, but the kick of this immortal brew was likewise beyond anything mortal. The world spun. The flagstones underfoot seemed to bob on ocean swells. Every osmanthus tree in the courtyard was dancing.
And the true meaning of the Immortal-Concealing Wine-Sword Formula revealed itself at last: the drunker he was, the faster he cultivated.
The progress bar moved in almost direct proportion to his intoxication. Tipsy, it walked. Half-drunk, it jogged. Blind drunk, it took off flying on the spot.
So from that day on, a rich smell of wine drifted out of the little back-mountain courtyard at all hours.
A rumor began to circulate quietly among the Wenjian Sect's disciples.
At first it was only the occasional passing disciple catching a faint whiff of alcohol and thinking nothing of it. But as the days wore on, the scent didn't fade — it grew thicker, thick enough that outer disciples two peaks away could catch a thread of it when the wind was right.
And so certain uninformed speculations began spreading among the disciples.
Namely, that Gu Chengming — the Wenjian Sect's foremost prodigy of the generation, first place in the Grand Tournament, the man who had turned the tide in the Tianque Secret Realm — had picked up a drinking problem.
The rumor's origin could no longer be traced, but the details were vivid enough. Disciples passing the back mountain, they said, had heard cups clinking and slurred drunken muttering from inside the courtyard. Others claimed to have glimpsed Senior Brother Gu around dusk, staggering out of the yard with an unsteady step and reeking of wine, very nearly walking headfirst into the spirit bamboo.
Once the news got around, the whole Wenjian Sect was in an uproar.
"No way. How could Senior Brother Gu be drinking himself stupid?"
"I don't believe it either, but you can't fake empty wine jars…"
"You don't think success went to his head after the tournament, do you? He's young. It's easy to get carried away once you've made a name for yourself. You see it in storybooks all the time."
"So our foremost prodigy is tarnishing himself just like that?"
More than a few disciples grew genuinely anxious. Several senior outer-sect disciples even co-signed a letter, intending to submit it to the elders of every hall and beg them to step in and "counsel" Senior Brother Gu back from the wrong path.
After all, everyone was sincerely worried about him.
The elders took it far more calmly. Ren Wencai and Shen Qianqiu, who knew the truth, laughed it off. Those who didn't know the truth were puzzled, but seeing that neither the Sect Head nor Elder Ren reacted, they held their positions too, chalking it up to a young man indulging himself a little.
When the news reached the Daoning Gate, however, the mood shifted entirely.
The Daoning Gate — that holy ground of Wenjian Sect female cultivators, famed for its purity of heart, severance of desire, and iron self-discipline — received the intelligence that "Gu Chengming has been drinking himself senseless every day lately" and erupted into a commotion nobody could have predicted.
Not indignant condemnation. Not anguished regret.
But rather—
"What is Senior Brother Gu like when he's drunk?"
They wanted to see. They very badly wanted to see.
The Daoning Gate's disciples cultivated purity of heart and freedom from desire. They had always looked down on the passions of the mortal world, and their daily conversation ran entirely to swordsmanship and the refinement of one's mental state.
But Gu Chengming was an exception…
And so, over the next few days, batches of furtive figures began appearing around the little back-mountain courtyard.
When Elder Jingxuan found out, she was angry enough to nearly go into qi deviation on the spot.
"The world's turned upside down! Disciples of the Daoning Gate, sneaking looks at a drunken man! Where is your decency!"
She issued a confinement order at once.
By the next morning, she discovered the confinement order had accomplished precisely nothing.
Because the enforcement disciples responsible for carrying out the confinement order — and even Su Qingmeng — had all gone off to the back mountain.
Elder Jingxuan could see nothing but darkness in the Daoning Gate's future.
Of all of which, naturally, Gu Chengming himself remained completely unaware.
Because at this point he spent more hours drunk than sober.
The Immortal-Concealing Wine-Sword Formula's progress advanced at a visible pace. The feel of wine qi circulating through his meridians grew more natural by the day, and the barrier between sword intent and drunkenness grew thinner and thinner.
He could dimly feel the threshold of entry level. One last step remained.
That step was called "the body drunk, the intent sober" — the body completely surrendered, while consciousness held its clarity within the drunkenness.
Gu Chengming drew a deep breath and took one last look at the small remainder of immortal brew in the green porcelain jar.
This final mouthful. Everything on the line.
The brew went down his throat, and wine qi swept through him like a raging tide. He let it run unchecked, and in an instant his consciousness was swallowed under the waves.
The world spun. His six senses blurred. Every joint in his body softened past his control under the saturation of wine qi.
Gu Chengming's body stood up.
The sword was in his hand.
He had no idea when he'd taken hold of it. Instinct, perhaps — or perhaps the Immortal-Concealing Wine-Sword Formula's sword intent, surging up from deep in his meridians at the final moment to perform the motion for him.
His feet carried him stumbling out of the courtyard.
Under the moonlight, the open ground of the back mountain unrolled before him. He held the sword, his body swaying like a crane with a broken wing.
But he began to dance the blade.
The tip carved crooked, wandering lines through the air. His foot caught; only a quick brace of the sword tip against the ground kept him upright. It was an utterly graceless posture, with nothing whatsoever of a "prodigy" about it.
The sword moved faster. His steps grew wilder. The trails his body cut through the moonlight became less and less predictable.
He had lost all control over his force.
Wrapped in wine qi, his spiritual power ran disordered, each stroke heavier than the last. The spirit bamboo of the back mountain began to shudder. Cracks spidered across the flagstones. Wine fragrance and sword qi wound together in the air.
Under the moon, sword flashing everywhere, Gu Chengming's hair came loose and his robes fell into disarray, his steps as insubstantial as though he trod on cloud — yet the sword in his hand burned brighter and brighter through the chaos.
And in that drunkenness, his consciousness found the single thread of clarity.
He seized it.
And then the sword intent bloomed open in an instant.
In that moment, the sky above the Wenjian Sect lit up.
Sword light shot up from the little back-mountain courtyard, stabbing straight into the heights and splitting the heavy cloud layer clean in two.
The radiance blossomed above the clouds and spread outward in every direction like ripples across water. One ring. Two rings. Three—
The reach of that sword light far exceeded any scale a single sect could contain. It passed over the Wenjian Sect's mountain gate, over the sect-protecting grand formation, over the unbroken ranges and the earth beyond, spilling outward toward far distances at an impossible speed.
Wine qi bore the sword intent aloft. One sword's light chilled nineteen provinces.
The Wenjian Sect's main peak.
Shen Qianqiu was reviewing documents. The instant that sword light flared, his brush punched straight through the paper.
He shot to his feet, threw the window open, and looked past the layered peaks toward the back mountain.
The sword light had not yet dispersed. A clean, cold fragrance of wine, braided with razor-edged sword intent, swept over him from miles away.
Shen Qianqiu stood frozen for three breaths.
Then he sat slowly back down in his chair, crumpled the perforated sheet of paper into a ball, and tossed it into the wastebasket.
…Fine. Understood. It's Little Gu again.
Outside the main hall of the principal peak.
Three elders were climbing the steps together.
At their head was Elder Zhou of the Punishment Hall, carrying a letter co-signed by disciples — page after page of it, filled with profound concern over how "Gu Chengming has sunk into wine and women, and may tarnish himself beyond repair."
They had come to report the matter to the Sect Head. They'd even worked out their wording: "We have no wish to meddle in a junior's private affairs, but this truly concerns the sect's future, and so we cannot but…"
They never finished assembling the sentence. That sword light came down over their heads like a falling wall.
All three elders looked up as one.
Sword light like a waterfall. Wine fragrance like a rising tide.
The co-signed letter slipped from Elder Zhou's rigid fingers, was caught by the mountain wind, turned two somersaults, and plastered itself against a pillar of the great hall.
Because at that moment all three elders' brains had ceased operating entirely. The afterglow of that sword light was still fading slowly across the vault of the sky, and the residue of wine and sword intent still hung around them, refusing to disperse.
As Fourth Realm cultivators, they knew far too well what that sword light meant.
…So. Tarnished?
Who was tarnished? Which one of them was tarnished?!
Great Qian. To the southwest, on the Huntian Plain north of the Emerald Screen Range.
The Hunyuan Sect.
On the Hunyuan Sect's martial practice peak, a Fourth Realm elder instructing disciples in their cultivation abruptly stopped mid-motion.
He turned his head, his gaze piercing a thousand miles to fix on the fading afterimage of sword light on the northeastern horizon.
"That sword intent…"
He studied it carefully for a moment, and his face changed.
"That's the Immortal-Concealing Wine-Sword Formula?"
Great Qian. To the northeast, in a certain secluded mountain valley.
A Fifth Realm old cultivator fishing beside a stream suddenly set down his rod.
He raised his head, and a glint of sharpness flashed through his clouded old eyes.
"That smell of wine… is that Hua Daiyi, the old drunkard? When did he make progress again?"
The disciple beside him had felt the lingering sword intent too, and couldn't hold back the question. "Master, what school is that? Why does it reek of wine?"
"The Immortal-Concealing Wine-Sword Formula. Hua Daiyi's bottom-of-the-chest masterwork."
The old cultivator stroked his beard and sighed with feeling. "That old drunkard has been stuck at the peak of the Fourth Realm for how many years now? And here he is today, gaining an inch after all. That stroke had a bearing three parts sharper than his peak ten years ago… it seems he's found some new opportunity."
The disciple nodded and produced a jade slip to record the event.
"Master, should we send Senior Hua a letter of congratulation?"
"Go on, go on. Offer a line or two."
The old cultivator picked his rod back up and said carelessly, "Tell him this old man congratulates Fellow Daoist Hua on his advancement in the sword dao, and will certainly call on him one of these days to beg a cup of good wine."
Meanwhile, back at the Wenjian Sect.
The sword light had scattered. The wine had not.
[Ding!]
[Side Quest: Manifesting Sagehood Before the Crowd - Sword Dao Chapter]
[Quest complete!]
[The host has successfully manifested his sagehood before an audience. Reward: one Technique Comprehension Acceleration Card!]
Ignoring the Free and Unfettered Art's theatrics, Gu Chengming stumbled back into the little courtyard and dropped onto a seat at the stone table. His brain was still airborne; his body had landed a step ahead of it.
It took him roughly the time it takes to drink a cup of tea to fully suppress the churning wine qi and get his wits back where they belonged.
Then he opened the system panel.
Sure enough—
[The Immortal-Concealing Wine-Sword Formula has reached entry level.]
[Current favorability: 5/Stranger]
Gu Chengming steadied himself, eyes settling on the dialogue box, waiting for the new technique's first words.
In his experience, a technique's opening line after reaching entry level tended to set the tone for the entire route.
Considering its founder was Hua Daiyi — an absurd, wine-mad old senior of the Hunyuan Sect with profound attainment in the sword dao—
Gu Chengming's expectations ran along the lines of… hearty type? Free-spirited type? Or maybe one of those swaggering old gourmands full of martial-world bluster?
The dialogue box flickered, and text slowly surfaced.
[The Immortal-Concealing Wine-Sword Formula sat up unsteadily, rubbed its eyes, and looked around.]
— Right, as expected. The sobering-up phase.
[Its gaze swept over the environment of the Sea of Consciousness, then across the other techniques watching it with varying degrees of curiosity and wariness, and finally settled in Gu Chengming's direction.]
Here it comes. The first line—
[The Immortal-Concealing Wine-Sword Formula nodded and said: Not bad. Your spirit veins run true, and your dantian's well rooted. Clearly the foundation of someone raised in a great orthodox sect.]
Gu Chengming inclined his head slightly.
An assessment of the host's foundation. A perfectly conventional opening — but at least it showed the technique had an eye for quality and knew good from bad.
[The Immortal-Concealing Wine-Sword Formula then looked over the other techniques in the Sea of Consciousness, its gaze resting briefly on Hundred Bones Resonance, the Huiyuan Sword Formula, the Qingxin Formula, Zhouli's Heaven-Human Heart-Rectifying Method, and the rest in turn.]
[It nodded thoughtfully: Quite a few techniques, each with its own strengths. I can tell you've put thought into how you allocate your cultivation resources, young friend.]
Hm. Analytical personality?
That was a promising sign. Gu Chengming was in the middle of thinking so when—
[The Immortal-Concealing Wine-Sword Formula changed tack, its tone turning suddenly wistful.]
[It sighed and said: Though speaking of which, the resource allocation model of the orthodox sects in today's cultivation world has serious problems.]
Gu Chengming blinked.
…Huh?
[Take the Wenjian Sect as an example. On the surface, resource disbursement to inner disciples is allocated by cultivation talent and contribution points. But in practice? What actually determines where the resources flow? The jockeying among the hall elders.]
Gu Chengming's expression began to grow complicated.
[The Punishment Hall handles discipline, the Hall of Merit and Discipline handles evaluations, the Scripture Repository handles inheritances. Every hall has its own little plot of turf. What resources a disciple receives depends far more on whose door he bowed at than on how much talent he actually has. This master-disciple-centered allocation mechanism is, at bottom, nepotism by another name.]
Hold on. What are you talking about?
[And the Great Qian imperial house's administration of the sects is even more preposterous. Nominally the sects are self-governing and the imperial house supervises. But how exactly is that supervisory authority exercised? Through the Night-Watch Bureau? How many personnel does the Night-Watch Bureau even have on its rolls? To supervise over a hundred sects large and small across the whole of Great Qian's territory, that averages out to how many Night-Watch Bureau men per sect?]
Isn't that a textbook case of institutions without enforcement?
[At the end of the day, Great Qian's governance framework for the cultivation world is far too crude. The division of rights and duties between the imperial house and the sects is vague, there's no clear legal basis for ownership of spirit vein resources, and the rights of rogue cultivators aren't protected at all. Think about it: a rogue cultivator painstakingly locates a wild spirit vein, and before he can even begin extraction, a nearby sect requisitions it outright in the name of "maintaining spirit vein stability." How is that any different from open robbery?]
The text in the dialogue box was getting longer, denser, scrolling faster and faster.
Gu Chengming couldn't get a word in edgewise. He was already starting to feel nostalgic for the character archetypes he'd once dismissed as clichéd.
Couldn't he get something normal? A tsundere, sharp-tongued little junior sister. A cold, ruthless female master. A gentle, all-forgiving senior sister. A yandere, obsessive demonic-sect enchantress. A bright, guileless spirit-beast girl. An arrogant, scheming sect master's daughter. A blank-faced, mysterious sword spirit bound to his blade. Anything!?
How had he ended up with another absolute lunatic of a technique?!
[And have you ever considered this: why does Great Qian have so few Sixth Realm cultivators? Is it really just that talent is hard to find? I have my doubts.]
[Go look up the register of Sixth Realm cultivators since Great Qian's founding. How many of them came out of orthodox sects? And how many came from rogue cultivators or minor sects?]
[The Great Qian royal house claims that high-realm cultivators shelter low-realm cultivators. But in practice?]
Gu Chengming was breaking out in a cold sweat.
If Zhouli's Heaven-Human Heart-Rectifying Method heard this in the Sea of Consciousness—
He stole a glance at Zhouli's dialogue box.
Sure enough. Zhouli's Heaven-Human Heart-Rectifying Method had already knitted its brows, its mood hovering somewhere between "you are gravely mistaken" and "this wretch is not worth counseling."
[The Immortal-Concealing Wine-Sword Formula was warming to its subject, wine qi rising, the boundaries of its language visibly escalating.]
[It burst out: To hell with "let those who ascend first lead the rest to ascension"!]
Gu Chengming went pale with alarm.
You really can't just say that out loud!
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