Unsheathed

“Greetings, Ms. Ning. I am Liu Jinglong of the Great Emblem Sword Sect.” Qi Jinglong introduced himself with a smile as he rose to his feet.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Liu,” Ning Yao replied with a smile of her own.

Bai Shou slapped Chen Ping’an’s hand away from his head, and Chen Ping’an tucked his hands up their opposite sleeves.

However, before he did so, he had already secretly extended a finger and pushed the flagon of wine sitting on the bench to Bai Shou’s side. With one flagon of wine beside Qi Jinglong and the other beside Bai Shou, it would appear as if he were the only non-drinker of the trio.

Ning Yao sat down beside Chen Ping’an, while Bai Shou went to sit beside Qi Jinglong, taking the flagon of wine with him as he went.

“I visited the Northern Complete Reed Continent in the past, but I didn’t go to the Great Emblem Sword Sect,” Ning Yao said. “Instead, I spent most of my time on the Northern Complete Reed Continent traveling through the mortal world.”

“You can come visit the Northern Complete Reed Continent again with Chen Ping’an if you get the chance,” Qi Jinglong said. “There’s some fine scenery to be seen on Graceful Peak.”

“It’ll be difficult for me to arrange a trip anytime soon,” Ning Yao said with a shake of her head.

“That’s true,” Qi Jinglong agreed with a nod.

Ning Yao was silent for a moment, then turned her gaze to Bai Shou, who unconsciously sat up a little straighter. “You’re Mr. Liu’s only disciple, so why not work hard on honing your swordsmanship?”

Even though her words were framed as a question, there was no sense of inquisition in her voice at all.

Bai Shou was like a child in a school having his homework checked by his teacher, and he replied in a timid voice, “I’ll be sure to work hard, Big Sister Ning!”

“For swordsmen, cultivation is a matter of looking into your own heart,” Ning Yao preached. “If you look solely at your sword, then you will lose your way and stray further and further away from the Great Dao of heaven and earth.”

Bai Shou didn’t dare to do anything but nod in response.

Qi Jinglong didn’t feel it was appropriate for Ning Yao to preach to his disciple.

Perhaps it would be rather arrogant for anyone else of Ning Yao’s cultivation base to be preaching to Bai Shou, but on the Sword Qi Great Wall, Ning Yao was no less qualified than any sword immortal to be instructing others in swordsmanship. Furthermore, Ning Yao wasn’t preaching in order to establish a position of superiority for herself.

Instead, she was only willing to impart this valuable advice because she was in the presence of a friend of Chen Ping’an’s, and a disciple of Chen Ping’an’s friend, both of whom were swordsmen who would stand to benefit from her advice.

“I’m going back into seclusion,” Ning Yao declared as she stood up to depart.

“Please do,” Qi Jinglong said as he also rose to his feet. “We’ve already taken up too much of your time.”

“We still have some precious wine at home. If you want it, just talk to Grandpa Nalan,” Ning Yao said to Chen Ping’an.

“I don’t drink, Ms. Ning,” Qi Jinglong hurriedly said.

“There’s no need to be shy, Mr. Liu,” Ning Yao said with a smile. “Even if there isn’t enough wine in our Ning Manor, our Sword Qi Great Wall has an abundance of both swordsmen and wine.”

“That’s right,” Chen Ping’an agreed with a nod as he secretly gave Ning Yao a thumbs-up.

He had written down whether Qi Jinglong liked to drink wine or not in his travel journal, so Ning Yao was naturally already aware.

As soon as Ning Yao left, Bai Shou immediately collapsed onto the railing in relief, then turned to Chen Ping’an with a resentful expression and asked, “Are you not afraid of her, Chen Ping’an? I was so scared I felt like I was about to die! I wasn’t even that nervous when I met our sect leader!”

“What’s there to be scared of?” Chen Ping’an asked. “I’m a man; why should I be scared of my wife?”

Qi Jinglong suddenly turned to the spot where the walkway was connected to the Dragon Slaying Cliff, and Chen Ping’an immediately turned in the same direction with an anxious expression. However, Ning Yao was nowhere to be seen.

Realizing that he had been tricked, Chen Ping’an scoffed, “I’m not sure if your swordsmanship has improved any since you reached the Upper Five Tiers, but you’ve certainly picked up some sly little tricks!”

“Be honest with me,” Qi Jinglong said with a smile. “How many people on the Sword Qi Great Wall right now think of me as a complete drunkard? Think carefully about your answer before you tell me.”

“I’ve only been on the Sword Qi Great Wall for a short time, and I’ve been really busy every day,” Chen Ping’an replied. “I have to practice my fist techniques every day, and I also have to make frequent trips to the top of the city walls to learn swordsmanship from my senior brother. If I’m not careful, I could easily end up bedridden for half a month, and I also have to dedicate twenty hours every day to Qi refinement.

“That’s how I was able to make a breakthrough, but even then, I’m still only a fifth tier cultivator. There are so many sword immortals on the streets of the Sword Qi Great Wall; do you not think that a mere fifth tier cultivator like me would be embarrassed to frequently go out in public? How many people do you think I could’ve possibly acquainted myself with during this past year that I’ve been here?”

“Sounds like you’re trying to make a lot of justifications for yourself,” Qi Jinglong remarked.

Chen Ping’an had no response to that. He had indeed overdone it a little.

“I’ve heard a great deal about the Ning Clan’s Dragon Slaying Platform and Minute Small World,” Qi Jinglong said as he stood up with a smile. “We’ve already seen the Dragon Slaying Platform, so let’s go to the training ground next.”

“We’ve seen the Dragon Slaying Platform? Where?” Bai Shou asked with a puzzled expression.

“Why even have eyes if you’re not going to use them?” Chen Ping’an chuckled.

“I’ll let you off the hook this one time out of respect for Big Sister Ning!” Bai Shou snapped.

“Look down,” Chen Ping’an said as he tapped his foot on the ground below.

Bai Shou was instantly astonished.

“You mean to tell me this entire hill is made out of Dragon Slaying Platform?!”

Chen Ping’an had already left the Dragon Slaying Cliff with Qi Jinglong to go to the Minute Small World.

Bai Shou didn’t go with them. He was much more interested in the Dragon Slaying Platform than whatever Minute Small World. Back in the Armory, he had heard that there was an extremely massive piece of Dragon Slaying Platform here, but he had been limited by his imagination, and he had thought that it would only have been the size of a table at the very most.

Never had he imagined that it would be the size of a house! He got down onto his hands and knees with his backside raised up high, then gently rubbed the ground with his hand. After that, he gently knocked on the ground with his knuckles, but they made no sound.

In the end, he mused to himself, “Holy crap! Big Sister Ning’s clan is rich!”

Walking alongside Chen Ping’an in the Minute Small World, Qi Jinglong said, “I heard quite a few stories about you while I was at the Armory. Not only is your title of Second Shopkeeper renowned across the entire Sword Qi Great Wall, but I also heard about it even in the Spring Banner Inn.”

“The bad news always seems to spread much further than the good.” Chen Ping’an sighed in a resigned manner.

“Can we speak here?” Qi Jinglong asked.

“Go ahead. You don’t have to worry about prying ears here,” Chen Ping’an replied.

There was Nalan Yexing keeping an eye on things, not to mention that the two of them were in the Minute Small World. Even if a sword immortal intended to eavesdrop on them, they would have to be wary of having to face the wrath of three formidable parties.

Even after suffering a drop in cultivation base, Nalan Yexing was still an Unpolished Jade Tier sword immortal. Furthermore, Qi Jinglong was an Unpolished Jade Tier sword immortal himself, and he also had the backing of Sect Leader Han Huaizi, Sword Immortal Li Cai, and the entire Northern Complete Reed Continent at large. As for Chen Ping’an, he only had a single backer in the form of Zuo You, but that was already more than enough.

After being assured that this was a secure place to speak, Qi Jinglong said, “You did all three of those things very well. The principles that can be learned free of charge and picked up from the ground are often ignored, and even if they are picked up, they’re generally taken for granted.”

“Continue,” Chen Ping’an encouraged with a serious expression. “You’re an outsider as far as the Sword Qi Great Wall is concerned, so it’ll be good for me to hear your perspective.”

“For the wine shop that you opened, the keys are the couplets and the accompanying horizontal banner, as well as the safety tablets on the walls,” Qi Jinglong said. “Even for those who visit the shop solely to drink, they’ll still occasionally catch glimpses of the names and sentiments written on those tablets.

“At the silk shop, it goes from the Seal Manual of the Hundred Sword Immortals to the Seal Manual of the Two Hundred Sword Immortals, then to the folding fan. As a storyteller sitting at the corner of the street, you freeload some sunflower seeds and snacks from the children.”

After speaking on those three things, Qi Jinglong began to provide his insights, continuing, “Swordsmen are the wealthiest Qi refiners under the heavens, but also the neediest. In order to try to fill the bottomless financial pit of nurturing their bonded flying swords, countless swordsmen sell everything in their possession and live as if they’re broke. Even on the occasions when they have some spare money to spend, there’s not much on the Sword Qi Great Wall that they can spend it on.

“For men, it comes down to drinking and gambling, while for women, they’ll perhaps go shopping and buy some things that catch their eye. However, this type of spending was often not something that a woman felt worthy of telling others about. The cheap Bamboo Sea Small World wine, or Azure Divine Mountain wine, can generally only draw in customers once or twice, but may not be enough to keep them coming back, so you won’t have as many regular customers as the established restaurants and wine shops.

“However, regardless of one’s reason for doing so, as long as they hang up a safety tablet on the wall, they’ll feel some type of sentimental attachment to your wine shop. On the surface, such an attachment seems so minor that it’s entirely inconsequential, but that’s not the case. These safety tablets are inscribed using sword qi, and the sword immortals who make those inscriptions do not do so lightly. The inscriptions on those tablets are not just errant remarks that don’t mean anything.

“Instead, for some sword immortals and swordsmen, they serve as their final words, something that they’ve left behind for their peers to remember them by should they suffer untimely demises on the southern battlefields. In my eyes, the wine shop is made up of more than just shoddy chairs and tables, subpar wine, and free yangchun noodles and pickled vegetables. Instead, whenever I go there, I would feel as if I were surrounded by the sword intent of all of the swordsmen and sword immortals who have visited the shop.

“I would browse through the safety tablets with reverence and leave one of my own in the hopes that those who come after me will see my safety tablet and learn that I was once here. Of course, as long as business is decent in the wine shop, you’ll be able to hear many stories about the Sword Qi Great Wall there as the shop’s second shopkeeper, thereby allowing you to gain an understanding of the complex circumstances of the Sword Qi Great Wall far quicker than you would’ve otherwise been able to.”

Chen Ping’an nodded as he added, “In addition to that, I also wanted to help Ning Yao’s friend, who is now my friend. Her name is Die Zhang, and I wanted to help her attract more business. That was actually my earliest original intention, and everything else only gradually came to me over time. It was a very natural process. The ideas came to me one after another without any real planning on my part, and it was as if it was all meant to be.”

“Given your honesty, you will surely have a very clear and pure sword heart when you become a swordsman in the future, enough to become a guest elder at our Great Emblem Sword Sect,” Qi Jinglong said with a smile.

“Did you not try to persuade Sect Leader Han?” Chen Ping’an asked.

“I did, and all I received for my efforts was a dressing down,” Qi Jinglong replied with a wry smile. “I didn’t actually want to go, but Disciplinary Elder Huang Tong made a request of me to do so, and I couldn’t just turn down a senior’s request.”

Qi Jinglong had forgotten his flagon of wine on the bench, so Chen Ping’an had picked it up for him, and it was now coming in useful.

He offered the flagon of wine to Qi Jinglong and said, “There’s a saying here that a sword immortal who doesn’t drink will drop back down to the Nascent Tier, so you need to start drinking right away! Perhaps it’ll even allow you to make a breakthrough to the Immortal Tier. You can then challenge Sect Leader Han to a sparring match, but tell him to restrict his cultivation base because you’re much younger than him. That way, you’ll be able to beat him back to the Northern Complete Reed Continent! Isn’t that a great idea?”

Qi Jinglong accepted the flagon of wine, but didn’t drink from it, and he had no intention of entertaining Chen Ping’an. Instead, he continued to speak on the previous subject.

“Seals were originally ornaments placed on the desks of scholars, and they align themselves best with a scholar’s teachings and what they stand for. In the Majestic World, it’s extremely rare for a scholar to entrust their seal and its inscription to others. Hence, even though you cast out those two hundred seals, the Seal Manual of the Hundred Sword Immortals and the Seal Manual of the Two Hundred Sword Immortals, to be sold seemingly without any discretion, it’s actually a very thoughtful gesture.

“However, without the wine shop serving as a hub of information, allowing you to examine the thoughts and life paths of so many sword immortals and earth immortal swordsmen, there’s no way you would’ve been able to achieve any of this. Right now, people are eagerly awaiting the next seals to be released, and they’ll be immediately snapped up on release, even if the inscriptions that they bear aren’t necessarily a good fit for the buyer.

“That’s because everyone knows that the seals sold in the silk shop are quite cheap to begin with, and if one were to purchase ten seals, then they could easily resell them for a profit. Hence, when you made the first Seal Manual of the Two Hundred Sword Immortals, you were actually concerned that this was only going to be a small deal on the Sword Qi Great Wall, and that as soon as you released the third batch of seals, you would flood the market to create an excessive supply, perhaps even negatively impacting the value of the previous seals that you’ve already released.

“This is why you decided to change tack, and instead of pledging yourself to engraving the next one hundred seals, you switched to selling folding fans instead, and you’ve been a lot more casual and arbitrary with the text that you’ve decided to inscribe upon these fans. In doing so, you’ve created something similar to slightly inferior forgeries. Not only do folding fans appeal to female buyers, but they’ll also serve as a point of comparison for those who’ve previously purchased seals, convincing them that the seals they’ve purchased were worthy investments.”

“What you’ve said is all correct, but there’s one thing that I have to add,” Chen Ping’an said. “Another reason why I decided to switch to making folding fans was to hide my intentions. Otherwise, if a sword immortal sees through my intentions, they’ll think I’m too calculating and develop a negative image of me. If I’ve already gone to such great lengths to cover my tracks, yet someone still manages to see through my intentions, then it won’t really matter at that point.

“There’s no need to pursue absolute perfection in any one thing, and I should give some sword immortals the chance to realize what I’ve been up to. The reason why I don’t mind is that for all of the seals and fans that I’m selling, my original intention was never to sell them to that select group of the most wise and introspective sword immortals.

“Of course, if someone is able to see the truth, yet does not reveal it, and is even willing to accept a seal that catches their eyes despite this, then they will have my utmost respect. If I get the chance, I would apologize to them in person for involving them in my scheme.”

“Your thought process is correct, and you’ve clearly thought things through very thoroughly,” Qi Jinglong remarked with a nod.

“As expected of someone who has visited my Downtrodden Mountain!” Chen Ping’an praised as he gave Qi Jinglong a firm pat on the shoulder. “That visit certainly didn’t go to waste! That little runt, Bai Shou, is far too inept in comparison, and I can tell that he barely learned anything! The way that he tried to backtrack earlier was far too stiff and unnatural. He was trying to get me out of trouble with Ning Yao, but all he did was dig me into an even deeper hole!”

In a rare display, Qi Jinglong took a sip of wine unprompted, then cast his gaze in the direction of the wine shop. Not only were there swordsmen and wine in that direction, but there was also Yanchi Alley and Spirit Rhino Alley, among other shoddy alleys, as well as many children who knew nothing of the Majestic World, but had grown sick of seeing sword immortals.

Qi Jinglong wiped his lips with the back of his hand, then said, “Without at least several dozen years, perhaps over a century of effort, what you’re doing now is largely pointless.”

Chen Ping’an was silent for a long while, then replied, “I feel bad if I don’t do anything; it’s as simple as that. That is the extent of my reasoning behind what I’m doing, and not much thought has gone into it at all.”

Qi Jinglong raised his flagon of wine, seemingly intending to share a drink with Chen Ping’an, but the latter scoffed, “Who do you think I am, some kind of actual deity? I had to pull out all my tricks just to get these two flagons of wine! I gave one to you, and Bai Shou took the other one, so I don’t have any left!”

Qi Jinglong lowered the wine flagon and didn’t drink from it.