Chapter 60

Chapter 60: Blade Marks Carved on the Cliff

After the meal was ready, Rong Shu filled a bowl, carried it over to the madman who was still playing his staring game with the boulder, and set it down.

She did not approach him. Stopping ten paces away, she put the iron rice bowl on the ground, then retreated another ten paces and raised her voice: “Respected senior, the meal is cooked. Please enjoy it.”

Having said this, she watched for a change in his expression, but he kept glaring at the rock and ignored everything around him.

Rong Shu had not expected a response anyway, so she turned to leave.

The valley was large. If she wanted a quiet, out-of-the-way spot to cultivate, it should not be hard to find.

As she walked through the valley, the environment was pleasant enough. But when she lifted her gaze toward the sky above, a wave of dizziness and nausea surged through her.

She quickly looked away, and the sensation slowly eased.

[This place is for confining people after all. Perhaps there’s a formation in place?]

When her eyes drifted idly over the crisscrossing fissures on the cliff face, her gaze sharpened.

[These scratches… they do not feel like cracks carved by wind and rain.]

Rong Shu narrowed her eyes and stared hard at the chaotic, seemingly random gouges on the rock.

Time passed. She forgot how long she had been staring. Long enough that her mind went hazy, as if those dead marks on the stone had suddenly come alive, turning into blood-edged blades that cleaved toward her—

“Hiss.”

Rong Shu came to herself, lifted a hand to shield her eyes, and turned her head at once.

[Why does this feel familiar?]

It was like that time she took a mission outside and happened to glance at Senior Brother Lin Dao.

She had nearly had her eyes pierced blind by invisible sword light.

The traces left on this cliff were fiercer and more domineering still. Fortunately, only their residual aura remained, nine parts of the edge worn away by wind and rain and time. The faintest tenth persisted, which made Rong Shu uncomfortable but did not truly harm her.

After a moment to steady herself, she risked another sideways glance at the scarred rock.

[Could these carvings… be a blade technique?]

The thought alone sent bright excitement to her face.

Could it really be a blade technique?

She had been hunting for one for a long time.

Although Rong Shu had never studied a blade art, Senior Brother Lin Dao had sparred with blade cultivators before. He knew a little of their moves and had shown her more than once.

This feeling… was right. It was a blade technique.

Senior Brother Lin Dao was a sword cultivator and had never learned a complete blade art, and when she had inquired at the sect’s Library Pavilion before, anything involving weapon arts was priced far higher than ordinary spells.

She did have some Spirit Stones now, but she could not explain how she had suddenly come by so many of them.

Past experience had taught Rong Shu not to let others know too much about her.

Being overly understood by others was no blessing in a cultivation world where death might strike at any time.

Openly she practiced the sword; if she secretly studied Twin Blades now, then on some future day in battle, an enemy who only knew she was a swordswoman would not be prepared for her Twin Blades. It might just catch them unawares.

With that in mind, Rong Shu picked up a thin twig from the ground and treated it like a blade.

Eyes on the blade marks carved into the cliff, her body began to move on its own. The thing she held was no longer a flimsy twig but a keen-edged blade.

When her blade chopped forward, there seemed to be a nascent spiral of blade qi coiling along its path, the friction with the air setting off a faint humming.

[The moves on the cliff… they turn into dual-wielding?]

When she realized later sequences involved two blades, Rong Shu’s delight only grew.

Wholly absorbed in her practice, she noticed nothing at all when the madman found his way here.

He stood there, stock-still and dumbstruck. He did not howl or rave as usual. His pupils were unfocused. It was unclear whether he stared at the gouges in the rock or at the little girl practicing below.

After standing there for a while, the madman left.

From start to finish, Rong Shu never sensed a soul arrive or go.

After practicing the blade work for two hour, she had committed every move inscribed on the cliff to memory.

Even so, the art was deep and difficult. In many places, she felt she had only grasped the surface shape and still could not fathom the intent.

Suddenly, her movements halted.

“Huh?”

She gave a light exclamation, as if she had sensed something, and quickly turned her senses inward to her dantian.

When she saw the dark spiritual qi inside suddenly surging, she froze.

This was… a breakthrough in the dark element?

Her dark element had reached the fourth layer of Qi Refining?

[What is going on? What did I even do? It just broke through on its own? Is it really that casual?] She scrubbed at her hair, baffled.

She had only been practicing a blade, had she not?

She had not done anything else.

So how had it broken through?

And why the dark element of all things?

[My wind element is only at the sixth layer of Qi Refining, and that is with regular cultivation. But this dark element…]

Her feelings toward the dark element had always been complicated.

She counted herself a righteous cultivator and felt she should not bear a dark attribute at all. So her dark cultivation had been mostly left to grow on its own.

[Hiss…] Rong Shu pressed a palm to her little heart, which was thumping lively. [Could it be I am some vicious, heinous sort, black-hearted and born for the dark? Is that why I mesh so well with it?]

[Could you not break through so fast? Sigh… honestly, I can do nothing with you, you little minx.]

If others saw that expression, they would probably throw a sack over her and give her a beating. Oh, so impressive, gaining cultivation without putting in the work.

She only fussed over it for a moment before tossing the matter of her dark-element breakthrough aside.

[Practice the blade. Practice the blade.]

Finding a blade art here for free, Rong Shu felt this assignment was pure profit.

Unwittingly, she practiced until dusk. Only then did it strike her that she had not cooked for the madman, and she hurried back.

When she returned, he was still glaring at the same rock. The earlier meal sat untouched.

Rong Shu retrieved the iron bowl and cooked a fresh pot. By the time it was ready, night was close at hand.

In a rush to head for the back mountain, she called from a distance: “Respected senior, I am heading out first. I will come again tomorrow.”

With that, and without worrying whether the madman acknowledged her or not, she strode quickly out of the valley.