Martial Cultivator

Chen Chao watched the sea vessel sail out, his mind wandering thousands of miles.

This trip away from the Divine Capital had begun with dealing with the southern qi refiners at Three Streams Manor, then he rushed to the Northern Frontier to fight alongside the border army in a war against the demons. After the war ended, he didn’t return to the Divine Capital at all. Instead, he continued south to the Infatuation Daoist Temple to kill the returning Daoist Wuyang, then pressed on without pause to Southridge, and finally arrived here.

The hardships along the way were difficult to describe in a few words, for he had faced life and death more than once.

At this moment, Chen Chao sat on a reef, deep fatigue etched on his face.

He was not made of stone. After doing so many things, it was natural to feel overwhelmed and weary—this was human nature.

Feeling the sea breeze, Chen Chao resolved that once he finished handling matters in Ying Prefecture, he would return to the Divine Capital. At the very least, he needed a proper rest before... continuing to deal with those troublesome matters.

A life destined for toil?

Chen Chao let out a self-mocking smile. Often he wondered whether the things he was doing now were truly what he wanted to do. The answer was always subtle: if he followed his true heart, he naturally wouldn’t want to; but if he lacked the ability, that would be understandable. If he had the ability and yet didn’t act, his conscience would not be at peace.

Chen Chao now was no longer the same as the Chen Chao before encountering that little girl, Xie Ying.

In just a few years, his mindset had changed drastically, though his youthful energy remained—albeit steadier now.

Chen Chao narrowed his eyes.

A strand of sea breeze blew past, gradually forming into a figure: a barefoot girl in white. She sat on a lower reef, her feet submerged in the water, small fish swimming around her jade-like feet.

Chen Chao glanced over. The girl in white truly seemed as if she had stepped out of a painting.

Seeing Chen Chao’s gaze, the girl smiled and asked, “Little Chen, compared to the girl you like, who is prettier?”

Chen Chao withdrew his gaze and looked out at the sea, answering calmly, “Naturally, her.”

The girl in white clicked her tongue, “An objective evaluation?”

Chen Chao smiled, “Hard to say.”

This answer offended neither side. Of course, Xie Nandu was not here; if she were, Chen Chao wouldn’t care what the girl in white thought, he would have said it was purely objective.

In truth, if you compared them, the girl in white and Xie Nandu each had their own merits, making it difficult to say who was more beautiful.

“But why haven’t you changed? Are you really not growing up?”

Chen Chao frowned slightly. He knew that once a cultivator reached a certain realm, their appearance would stabilize. But he found it hard to believe that the girl before him, at this age, had already reached such a high level.

The girl in white rolled her eyes. “Back in our time, among the cultivation paths, there were cultivators who were extremely skilled at alchemy. Refining a few batches of appearance-preserving pills or some rejuvenation pills was nothing at all. You’re lucky you weren’t born in that era. Otherwise, every female cultivator you saw would look pretty, but for all you know, each one could be a several-hundred-year-old granny.”

Chen Chao smiled and said, “Then are you the same?”

The girl in white shot Chen Chao a look, too lazy to dwell on this topic, and instead asked, “You ran all the way here from the south because you want to see that uncle of yours with the awful temper?”

Chen Chao nodded. “Precisely.”

No beating around the bush - say what needs to be said. When the Great Liang Emperor parted ways with him back then, it was obvious he was going somewhere to help him regain face. But he was alone, and Chen Chao felt uneasy no matter how he looked at it. At the time, he couldn’t stop him. Firstly, because his realm was insufficient, and secondly, because he knew too little.

The girl in white said irritably, “Chen Che ruined my major plans. He stirred things up badly and ended up losing his life over there as well.”

Chen Chao smiled silently.

Seeing that Chen Chao didn’t react as she had expected, the girl in white felt a bit deflated. “What, kid, you’re that hard to fool?”

Chen Chao smiled. “Do you take me for a three-year-old?”

The girl in white clicked her tongue before saying, “Chen Che went to a place out at sea called Mount Qiuling to help you seek justice. He killed some people there, he even killed their mountain lord. The matter really blew up. Over there, they already hate Chen Che to the bone.”

Chen Chao frowned slightly, committing the three words Mount Qiuling to memory.

After thinking for a moment, Chen Chao asked, “What exactly is the situation like at sea?”

The girl in white glanced at Chen Chao, seemingly considering whether to tell him these things. After a moment’s thought, she still said, “There’s a chain of sea islands over there. The area isn’t small, but it’s not huge either; about half the territory of Great Liang. Over the past thousand years, most cultivators who crossed over from the Nepenthe Realm chose to sail there. Those people cultivate over there, establish sects, and think about how to pursue eternal life.”

Chen Chao frowned. “How many people are there?”

The girl in white said, “Not few, but not all of them are at the Fuyun Realm. Some cultivators had offspring over there, thinking that since both parents were exceptionally gifted, their descendants would surely have unparalleled cultivation talent. But that wasn’t the case. Overall, how many Fuyun cultivators there really are over there still depends on how many people from your side go over.”

Before Chen Chao could speak, the girl in white continued on her own. “Don’t worry about whether they’ll cross the sea and return. Guys like Wuyang are, after all, just a minority. That group cultivates bitterly only for longevity and has not the slightest interest in your so-called trends of the world.” ”Besides, after Chen Che went on a killing spree, strict orders were issued over there forbidding any more cultivators from crossing the sea back. Of course, as an exchange, Chen Che also can’t return for a short time.”

“A short time?”

Chen Chao keenly caught the most crucial three words.

The girl in white said disdainfully, “Chen Che isn’t like those people. As for rules, right now there’s no choice but to follow them. When the time comes, if he doesn’t want to care, then he won’t care.”

“Oh right, there’s something wrong with cultivation over there over the past thousand years. Most of those cultivators aren’t much stronger than the average at the end of Nepenthe. Once you step into that realm, you can naturally deal with them one punch at a time. After all, what you learned is the White Mist that I taught you.”

The girl in white kept stirring the seawater with her feet, as if she did not really care.

She blinked and said with a grin, “But you young people nowadays, quite a few of you actually count as decent seedlings. Even if you were placed in our time, you would not be bad. You could probably scrape together some title like a second-rate Holy Son.”

“Second-rate Holy Son? Then I suppose you would be something like a third-rate Holy Maiden?”

Chen Chao looked at the girl in white. There were many things he truly had no way of finding out on his own, and only the girl in white before him could tell him some of them.

“Don’t think about trying to draw words out of me. What I can tell you, I will tell you. What I can’t tell you, you’ll have to ask yourself whether you’re even qualified to know.”

The girl in white said with a smiling squint, “But there are some things I can still talk about. For example, what you’ve always wanted to know - the martial path. These thousand years of cultivation on the martial path has indeed been incomplete. If you put it a thousand years ago, martial artists and sword cultivators stood side by side, both the most troublesome cultivators in the world. That’s because martial artists did not only temper their bodies, they could also cultivate magic spells. Can you imagine that?” ”A martial artist whose physique could withstand the erosion of some cultivators’ daoist arts, and who could at the drop of a hat draw upon the grand might of heaven and earth to fight enemies, is that terrifying or not?”

“But everything has its pros and cons. Back then, wanting to become a martial artist did not only mean being able to endure hardship. In fact, the requirements on one’s physique were extremely high. That sort of thing was something like - if you weren’t born with it, then you really didn’t have it. How could it be like now, blooming everywhere?”

The girl in white said softly, “All these years, haven’t you been curious about why your cultivation aptitude was so poor, why you couldn’t become a cultivator, yet after becoming a martial artist, you advanced extremely quickly on the martial path?”

Chen Chao nodded. In truth, he had been thinking about this all along, yet he had never been able to figure it out. He was someone who could cultivate nothing else at all, who could only settle for becoming a martial artist, yet after becoming one, his realm had actually... advanced by leaps and bounds.

“Good luck. Count it as you having a great opportunity. A martial artist like you, if there were no white mist, and you only relied on the martial path of cultivation from these past thousand years to move forward, then in this lifetime you would at best be a Nepenthe, and you would definitely have to spend at least a full sixty-year cycle to barely, dangerously step into Nepenthe. As for battle strength, put it another way, if you and Chen Che were both at Nepenthe, if he gave you one punch, wouldn’t you be spitting half a bowl of blood?”

“With the white mist, your path was, from the very beginning, actually no different from the martial path from a thousand years ago. And looking at it this way, you kid are actually very suited to that kind of cultivation method from back then, it’s practically a match made by heaven. In other words, if you were placed in our time, you really would have been a genius. You’d probably be called a martial dao embryo, fought over by a bunch of sects, and would barely be able to squeeze into the ranks of first-rate Holy Sons?”

Chen Chao asked curiously, “Barely squeezing into first-rate?”

The girl in white frowned and said, “Do I really have to say that you have the bearing of a Martial God?!”

Chen Chao burst into laughter.

The girl in white shot Chen Chao a glance and continued, “Your cultivation nowadays originated a thousand years ago, but in reality, from that point onward, many things were already missing. So when those overseas fellows ran into powerhouses from our time, they probably just ended up like...”

The girl in white raised her fair thumb and index finger and made a gesture. “About this strong.”

Chen Chao said, “But by now, after refining that white mist, I’ve walked a new path.”

The girl in white mocked, “What you’re doing is basically like seeing a mountain of gold. You could clearly walk right in and take whatever you want, but instead you only glance at it a few times and insist on saying you want to rely on your own ability to earn money. Isn’t that stupid?”

Chen Chao laughed it off.

“But if you kid really can earn another mountain of gold like that, you’d probably become the second person on the martial path with hope of claiming supremacy and becoming an ancestor.”

In the white-clothed girl’s view, the most remarkable figure on the martial path was, of course, the Martial Dao Ancestor who originally created this path of cultivation. The second could only be counted as half a one, namely the half-ancestor who opened up this path in the last thousand years.

If Chen Chao could continue this path along the half-ancestor’s road and elevate it to a level that could stand shoulder to shoulder with that Martial Dao Ancestor, he would probably be called a new ancestor.

Able to advance alongside that Martial Dao Ancestor, like the sun and moon together.