Sword of Coming

Sword of Coming

The Northern Complete Reed Continent’s Sword Immortal Li Cai was someone who wasn’t willing to settle down. She was challenging the Great Emblem Sword Sect’s Han Huaizi to a sword duel today, and she would challenge some other sword immortal to a sword duel tomorrow.

If she couldn’t find a sword immortal to challenge, then she would go and pick on Nascent Tier sword cultivators, hollering that these people couldn’t even beat a woman. Not only that, but they didn’t even dare to accept her challenge. Could they still be regarded as true men? Where were their balls?

Many Nascent Tier sword cultivators would accept her challenge in anger, and after losing, they would run away and ask their friends for help. Indeed, who didn’t have a few sword immortal friends at the Sword Qi Great Wall? Things would be okay if Li Cai won, and she would move on and find another sword immortal to challenge.

If she lost, however, she would seek out the Nascent Tier sword cultivator again. Repeating this process two or three times, the Nascent Tier sword cultivators would eventually wear aggrieved expressions, with their sword immortal friends no longer willing to meet them.

One of the Nascent Tier sword cultivators said to Li Cai that she couldn’t always target him like this, so he secretly introduced her to another Nascent Tier sword cultivator, saying that he had even more sword immortal friends.

And thus, Li Cai sincerely fell in love with the Sword Qi Great Wall.

She could enjoy endless fights, and she wouldn’t need to worry about anything regardless of whether she won or lost. This was significantly better than fighting other people in the Northern Complete Reed Continent, where she needed to restrain herself due to relationships, sensibilities, and whatnot.

Li Cai almost wanted to find a random man to marry, and that way, she could stay here and not return to the Northern Complete Reed Continent.

Upon thinking of this, however, she would feel like she was betraying Jiang Shangzhen. Thinking a bit more, she rationally told herself that a man like Jiang Shangzhen would never reserve his romantic feelings for a single woman, so what was the point of liking him? Was that not humiliating herself?

However, whenever she sat atop the city wall, or whenever she was nurturing her wounds at the Myriad Ravine Residence, she would think about this again and again and realize that she was unable to sever her feelings for him. This caused Li Cai to feel so vexed that she almost wanted to drink herself to death.

Li Cai was temporarily staying at the Myriad Ravine Residence, not far away from the Armory that had already become the Great Emblem Sword Sect’s private residence. It was even closer to Cloud Stop Pavilion, where all of the main structures were carved from jade.

Li Cai thus sent a letter to Jiang Shangzhen, asking him to use his money to purchase this residence. However, she was afraid that he wouldn’t be willing to spend, so she doubled the asking price of the residence in the letter.

An emaciated old man with a bulbous nose held a pot of wine in his hand and left his residence in a rare sight, shakily making his way to the city wall to enjoy the scenery. He seldom came here due to the strong wind.

He walked past the Unpolished Jade Tier sword cultivator who had an extremely long sword tassel and walked with his sword dragging along the ground, and even though the two of them were actually extremely far apart due to the great width of the city wall, the initially adrift Wu Chengpei suddenly turned around and stared intently at the old man, with the rims of his eyes becoming red as he shouted in anger, ”Piss off, you old bastard!”

The old man had the nickname of ”old deaf guy” at the Sword Qi Great Wall, something that didn’t sound impressive at all. However, he was legitimately one of the ten most powerful people at the Sword Qi Great Wall, and this was not to mention his rank being above that of Nalan Shaowei and Lu Zhi.

To put things bluntly, the Sword Qi Great Wall was a place where anyone could suddenly enter a bad mood, so Wu Chengpei’s incredibly offensive remark was more than enough reason for the old deaf guy to draw his blade and attack. Anyone who dared to stop him would also become his target.

However, the old deaf guy truly seemed like a deaf person, and not only did he not say anything, but he even started to walk more briskly, instantly disappearing into the distance like a puff of smoke.

Only then did Wu Chengpei lower his head and continue forward.

The old deaf guy stopped many times as he walked, and he remained silent regardless of whether people greeted him or ignored him.

He stopped and stood still after arriving before the monk, and he said in a hoarse voice, ”Teach me more about Buddhism. It’s not like I can hear you anyway.”

Already sitting on the end of the city wall, the monk heeded the old deaf guy’s request and expounded some Buddhist teachings.

There was hazy white mist around the monk’s straw mat, and wisps of golden light would occasionally dazzle before dispersing again. These were mystical sights of splashes in the river of time resulting from its obstruction by some invisible barrier.

The monk reached forward and cupped some water in his hand, but he was still a fraction slower than the dispersing wisp of golden light. He retracted his hand, having failed to achieve his goal one time.

The old deaf guy then made his way to the other end of the city wall to visit the Confucian sage who had once been a talented Buddhist monk. He essentially uttered the same words again, and the Confucian sage also expounded some teachings.

The old deaf guy nodded before seeking out the old Daoist priest who was located extremely high up in the sea of clouds. He was the first disciple of the Dao Ancestor’s first disciple, and after he said a few words, the old deaf guy left the city wall and went back to the dungeon that he had been responsible for guarding for several thousand years.

The dungeon didn’t have a name, and strangely enough, the higher the cultivation base of the great demons, the closer to the surface of the ground they were suppressed and locked up. The old deaf guy walked past the rows of cells, completely unable to hear the abuse and ridicule hurled his way. As for the furious rampages of the great demons causing the entire dungeon to shake, the hunchbacked old deaf guy paid absolutely no heed to this, not even raising his head to take so much as a single glance. Because of this, he wasn’t able to see the vicious resentment in the eyes of the demons either.

In the end, the old deaf guy navigated to the lowest level of the dungeon to visit the weakest demons. He taught them sword techniques, not caring whether these demons learned or not. They couldn’t escape the fate of death anyway, and it was difficult to say whether dying earlier or later would be more fortunate.

The old great sword immortal had tasked him with one matter before, telling him that on the day he went to the city wall to fight, he needed to remember to kill all of the demons in the dungeon, although he could spare the lives of three Golden Core Tier demons using his accumulated merit according to their agreement from before. The old deaf guy would have truly gone deaf if he had failed to hear and acknowledge even this — indeed, a dead Ascension Tier great demon would naturally be deaf, no?

The old deaf guy didn’t feel like there was anything for him to complain about. After picking and choosing for thousands of years, he had settled once again on three talented demons. The problem was, regardless of how talented the demons were and how much they suppressed their cultivation, they would eventually be forced to break through once enough time passed.

The reason for this was very simple — how could they survive hundreds or thousands of years if their cultivation base wasn’t high enough? They would die of natural causes if their cultivation base wasn’t high enough.

Several of them had died over the course of many years, causing the old deaf guy to feel a sense of pity many times. He had waited and waited, and after waiting for such a long time, his three surviving unofficial disciples were the juniors of countless senior brothers and senior sisters who had secretly practiced sword techniques and then secretly passed away.

Of the three unofficial disciples, one was at the Abode Tier, one was at the Dragon Gate Tier, and one was at the peak stage of the Golden Core Tier and on the verge of going crazy.

The old deaf guy was very open and honest when it came to taking disciples, and those who advanced to the Nascent Tier would face death. Thus, the demons could carefully consider how they advanced.

At the Sword Qi Great Wall, apart from the city, Mirage Market in the north, the Armory, the Myriad Ravine Residence, Cloud Stop Pavilion, and other similar residences left behind by sword immortals, there were also some other sites that could just barely qualify as famous landmarks.

When it came to restricted areas, however, there were three other locations in addition to the dungeon guarded by the old deaf guy. There was the sword market managed by the Dong Clan, the garment market managed by the Qi Clan, and the alchemical pill market managed by the Chen Clan.

The swords forged at the sword market were never very good, and they were ordinary swords that couldn’t even qualify as immortal treasures. Sword immortals could take them or leave them, and sword cultivators who ascended the city wall would all be given one for free. Similarly, they could also take them or leave them.

Whether through clan inheritance or by spending a huge sum of money to purchase them from the Majestic World, disciples and descendants of large clans could display their impressive abilities if they managed to obtain a good sword.

In reality, however, many sword immortals especially liked to carry swords forged by the sword market, using them to slay countless demons.

The Dao robes made by the garment market also weren’t very high in quality.

In fact, they looked very basic and unserious.

Despite this, it was extremely clear that the sword market and the garment market were the most indispensable parts of the Sword Qi Great Wall.

Sword immortals didn’t fall from the sky here, and they were all sword cultivators who had advanced one tier at a time. The only difference was how quickly or slowly each person advanced.

The function of the alchemical pill market was the most straightforward — the spoils of battle and the corpses of the demons on the battlefield to the south would all be fully utilized. Not only that, but the alchemical pill market also had the most diverse mix of people from all over the place.

Cultivators from the alchemical branch and the talismanic branch numbered the most, and some people voluntarily came to the alchemical pill market to sign a contract, perhaps for one hundred years or several hundred years, only leaving after they made enough money. There were also outsiders who had been kidnapped and forcefully brought here, and there were hidden elites or refugees from the Majestic World who had come here to flee from calamity.

The Sword Qi Great Wall relied on this alchemical pill market to perform transactions of various values with the many intercontinental ships that had come from the Majestic World and docked at Stalactite Mountain.

At the same time, the alchemical pill market also had a very close relationship with the dungeon managed by the old deaf guy. After all, the blood, skeletons, and demon core shards of many great demons could be regarded as paramount treasures in the mountains.

It was very easy for anyone to enter the three extremely strict and tightly guarded restricted areas, but it was incredibly difficult for anyone to leave, even if one were a sword immortal.

Among those who resided in the strokes of the colossal characters engraved on the southern great wall, there was a type of sword cultivator who would distance themselves from the matters of the city. Even when they occasionally visited the city wall and the areas to the north, they would do so secretly and without causing a single ripple.

They were responsible for ”collecting money” from the Savage World.

They were similar to the border scouts of mortal empires in the Majestic World.

Thus, the weakest of them were still Dragon Gate Tier sword cultivators, and each time they ventured south, they would definitely be led by a sword immortal.

In the past, the greatest ambition of Chen Sanqiu and Little Ququ — the former who hailed from a top-notch clan and the latter who had worked hard and risen from an impoverished background — had been to venture south to collect money.

The sword cultivator who ventured south the most and ventured the furthest south liked to refer to himself as a sword practitioner, saying that he was carefree not for the sake of attracting the gazes of fine maidens, but simply because he liked the martial world.

The Savage World to the south was a large martial world where they could encounter many interesting things.

After uttering these bold words that stirred the souls of the younger generation, however, the sword cultivator who said these things would giddily run to the city to drink, going wherever he could attract the most gazes of fine maidens.

Each time he returned inebriated and reeking of wine, he would smile widely and say to some of the little bastards whom he disliked that some of them had almost run off to dob him in to his fathers or even his old ancestors. Thankfully, however, he was filled with a righteous aura and able to control himself, so beauty and seduction wouldn’t be able to approach him at all!

If a junior talked back, the sword cultivator, who was never willing to suffer a loss, would name some person from the junior’s clan and remark that they couldn’t even be regarded as a beautiful woman. However, this didn’t matter, because those women who secretly liked him could all enjoy a bonus to their appearance, becoming beautiful women even if they weren’t actually beautiful.

In any case, there were also their thin waists, their long and slender legs, their shapely bosoms, and so on. As long as one had the heart to discover things, where couldn’t one find beautiful scenery? If the juniors didn’t understand what he was talking about? Then he would beckon them over and help to open their eyes, teaching them a secret mystical ability of the Majestic World that couldn’t be carelessly taught to other people...

After making these jokes and going back to work, he would often lose one or more juniors as the sword cultivators traveled south to collect money. Sometimes, entire groups of sword cultivators would fall in the foreign land. When the survivors gathered again, some faces would be missing, and those who hadn’t understood him in the past or had feigned ignorance would never again get the opportunity to say that they understood him.

At those times, the self-proclaimed sword practitioner would become more muted and drink by himself.

One time, he squatted at someplace as the sword cultivators slowly returned, but he was ultimately unable to see a single group where he recognized everyone. A great demon appeared in the end, holding a long spear that he raised into the air, as if he were raising a skewer of tanghulu.

The great demon came to a stop extremely far away from the Sword Qi Great Wall, and he explicitly called out the sword cultivator’s name before launching the spear at someplace on the southern city wall.

The sword cultivator caught the spear and gently handed it to a person behind him, after which he dashed forward with his sword, charging to the heart of the Savage World and unleashing his blade. He unleashed his blade at Holding Moon Mountain, at Elite Cavalry River, and wherever there was a great demon.